


Double Tap

by sparrowshellcat



Category: Real Person Fiction
Genre: Apocalypse, F/F, F/M, M/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 17:30:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 78,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowshellcat/pseuds/sparrowshellcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the Tumblr prompt: <i>"petition for jennifer lawrence and emma stone to co-star in a movie as lesbian zombie hunters"</i></p><p>Emma Stone used to have this plan for her life. It was all laid out.</p><p>All she’s got now is a shitty job, a zombie apocalypse survival plan, and a Tom Baker scarf.</p><p>Only, as it turns out, watching ever Romero movie a thousand times over hasn’t actually prepared her all that well for the end of the world.</p><p>Or, for that matter, for the entirely fascinating new girl in town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Apocalypse Big Bang 2013.
> 
> \---
> 
> For more fic and art, you can follow me on Tumblr! [sparrowshellcat](http://sparrowshellcat.tumblr.com)

**AUTHOR’S NOTE**

 

In its purest sense, this story is technically Real Person Fiction, because all of the characters are developed upon the likenesses and names of various actors. However, I know absolutely nothing about these actors as real people, so other than the appearance and names, they bear basically no resemblance to the actual real people.

This comes about for two reasons. Firstly, this story was inspired by the Tumblr prompt “ _petition for jennifer lawrence and emma stone to co-star in a movie as lesbian zombie hunters”,_ which sounded like a great novel, to me – so I wrote it. Secondly, when I write original fiction, I always choose actors to represent the characters, so as to make it easier for me to visualize them – and this time I just ran with naming them after the actors I’d chosen. Like many of my decisions in my life, it came down to seeming like a great idea at the time.

Either way, I hope you enjoy this story, and I really hope you check out the artwork done for this story by croissantkatie! She did an awesome job of capturing the world I was creating here – and to make it even better, she created it despite my terrible job at getting story done on time! Go see the art here: Art by croissantkatie

Thank you for coming to check this out, enjoy! **  
PROLOGUE**

**SIX YEARS AGO**

 

Aldis hip checked the front door of the little townhouse he shared with his fiancé open, pleased to be getting into shelter, out of the wind and the rain that was just this side of becoming snow, and groaned in pleasure at the smells that were coming out of the kitchen, wafting his direction. Juggling his backpack and the mail, he stepped inside, kicked the door closed behind himself, and kicked off his boots before calling, loudly, "Lucy! I'm home!"

There was a laugh that floated out of the other room, then a moment later, his fiancé poked her head out as she leaned over to look at him, blond hair falling in a curtain as she did. "Who is this Lucy character? Should I be jealous?"

"Of course, darling, you should always be jealous when your man comes home calling for a different woman," he laughed, and shed his coat.

"Good man, Ricky." She teased, and he laughed as she disappeared back into the kitchen.

A few minutes later, jacket shed, backpack left behind, he stepped into the kitchen, dropped the mail on the counter top, then stepped up behind her, where she worked at the stove. Slipping his arms around her waist, he pulled her back against his chest, and marveled as he always did at the perfect way that she slotted against his chest, her petite frame all but swallowed up in his height and lanky limbs, like he could envelope her close and tight to him. Keep her safe from the world, and never let her go. Though Emma kept stirring the sauce that was bubbling away on the stove and smelling abso-fucking-lutely amazing, she did lean back into his chest, letting him hold her up. It was a warm sort of simple moment, but it made his heart swell in joy, and he kissed the top of her head, quietly. "So," Aldis said, lightly, not wanting to let her or this moment go, "How was your day?"

"Mmm. Not bad. I got an A on that paper I was stressing out about, so I guess I should just learn my lesson and stop stressing," she said, and lifted the wooden spoon she was stirring with towards him. "How's this taste?"

Aldis slurped up a little of the sauce, frowning slightly. "Maybe a little more curry powder?"

"I was thinking the exact same thing," she said, brightly, and slipped out of his arms to head for the spice rack. Aldis reluctantly dropped his arms and let her go. If he had his way, they would just spend all day every day curled up together, until they merged, somehow, into one perfect person. Only that, apparently, was a little creepy and probably something that belonged in horror movies, so he didn't really speak those ideas. (If he had, Emma would have laughed and told him about Aristotle and his belief that humans were once two people in one body, but he never told her, so he never knew that his bizarre sort of desire to be close all the time actually related to an old Greek myth that she had written a paper on in first year.) "It's sort of odd, isn't it, how much we think alike."

"I don't think it's odd at all." He grinned. "Great minds always think alike."

"Fools also never differ," Emma smirked, and sprinkled more of the curry powder over the sauce. She stirred for a moment longer, then offered the wooden spoon again.

This time, the mix was perfect, and he was soon setting the table for them as she worked at perfecting the rice that was going to go along with their curry. The radio was playing, quietly, in the background, a left over from before he'd gotten home, because he knew that Emma didn't like the silence. Said that it felt too empty, so she would fill it with mindless television that she wasn't actually watching, or the radio, and that was what it was, at the moment, the radio playing, quietly, almost enough for him to ignore. But Emma wasn't quite ignoring it, and he wasn't sure if she noticed it or not, but she was swaying her hips slightly along with the music, the rhythm catching her movements, so that she every once in a little bit would shimmy along with a drum rift or something. Downright adorable, it was, he thought, as he set the glasses out on the table.

"So," she called, as she dropped broccoli into a small sauce pan to cook up. "How was your day, then?"

"Wonderful," he teased, kissing the top of her head, again, as he passed, digging cutlery out of the drawer. "I learned how to perform a tracheotomy."

"...isn't that the one where you punch a hole through the person's throat so that they can breathe?" She glanced up at him.

"Mmhmm. Terribly fascinating stuff, let me tell you," he snickered.

"...that sounds completely awful, actually." Emma rolled her eyes, and continued chopping the broccoli. "God, the amount of blood that would be involved..."

"Well, yes, but they don't recommend that you become a doctor if you have problems with blood."

"...who would have ever guessed?" She snickered, amused, and glanced over at the pile of mail that the man had brought in when he'd come in. "So what's in the mail today? Anything exciting?  _Money_ , maybe? I'd love to have gotten some money in the mail..."

"No, no money," he laughed, picking up the pile, and sorting through it for a few moments. "Flier, flier, flier, oooh, we could save on insurance, let's see, coupons for hamburgers... advertisement for a coffee shop..."

"God, we don't actually  _get_  mail for us, anymore, do we? It's all... generic." She sighed, shaking her head.

"Ooooh, something with an actual name on it." Aldis smirked, and held up a clean white envelope. "From a publisher. Looks like you got another rejection letter."

"Oh, hardy har har," Emma frowned, and stepped forward, reaching for the letter.

Aldis laughed, and held it up, out of her range. She was a lot shorter than him, so he barely even had to hold it over his head. "No way, I'm not going to go through another night of you being grumpy about getting rejected again, it can wait until tomorrow morning..."

"Aldis!" She grumbled, and hopped up, trying hopefully to grab it.

"All right, all right," he laughed, and handed it over, leaning on the counter and watching her fondly as she darted over to the other side of the table to rip the envelope open, tugging the papers out, instead, so that she could lean back and read over the one single piece of paper that was inside. Of course it was a rejection letter. It had to be. He'd heard all about how if you actually  _got_  published, they would send you a big thick craft envelope full of all of the information that you would need to take a contract with them. She had told him that, over and over. She was thrilled and excited about the idea of getting published, after all. "But really, I know it's your dream, and all, to be published, but you let yourself get really stressed about it, every time, and that's not really healthy, is it, hun? You need to relax, it's not like you need it to live on, I'll be able to keep us going without it, I promise."

"...I know," Emma said, quietly, not actually looking up from the paper. Her brows were furrowed, and he sort of wanted to kiss the little wrinkle between them. "But that doesn't stop it from being a dream, does it?"

"No, I guess it doesn't," he agreed, pushing off the counter, and rounding the table again, and pulling  her against his chest. "It's going to be okay, hun..."

"Thanks," she said, letting out a little sigh, and curling into his chest, hugging him tightly around his waist.

"It  _was_  a rejection letter, wasn't it?" He asked, quietly, stroking her hair, fingers running through the fine blond strands. "Again."

Emma sighed again, heavily, and nodded.

"I'm sorry, hun. It's going to get better. But at least it's not like you're depending on it, right? That makes it better?"

"Yeah, that makes it better," she said, quietly, then pushed off his chest, and patted his chest before smiling up at him, brightly. "Love you, Aldis. Now let's... dinner's ready, I think. Curry, rice and broccoli. Your favourite, right?"

"I'm pretty sure that's your favourite," he laughed, softly, but moved forward to help her with dinner.

They ate, while he tried to make her smile as much as possible, so she wouldn't think about the letter that still lay, like a dark cloud waiting for them, on the counter, and he was relieved that Emma laughed, softly. They did the dishes, did some work on their homework, and flopped together on the couch for awhile, to watch television. He couldn't really remember, afterwards, what it was they had watched, because Emma had been distracting him by brushing her fingertips over his collarbone, and when one thing had led very quickly to another, he realized later that he couldn't remember how to show ended because he'd been lost in Emma and the way she moved over him.

Aldis had given her a kiss goodnight, then they had curled up in bed together, his arms wrapped loosely around her waist as she slotted in against his chest again, perfectly sized, like human nesting dolls.

As he slipped to sleep, though, he didn't notice that her eyes were still open.

When he woke up, the next morning, late because it was a Saturday and his favourite thing ever was sleeping in, on mornings when he could, Aldis stretched, and yawned. The bed was empty, but that was normal, Emma was probably just on her run, so he rolled out of bed, ran his hands over his all-but-shaved scalp, and headed into the bathroom.

Shaved, showered, teeth brushed, he headed into the kitchen to start getting breakfast ready.

And paused.

Something wasn't right, here.

He wasn't sure what it was, at first. It was a normal day, wasn't it, still fairly early in the morning on a Saturday, which was a nice change from his usual 5 am wake up calls, but something still seemed  _wrong_. Completely wrong.

Looking around, the house itself felt  _empty_.

...why was it empty?

Walking into the living room, he frowned, confused. No, everything was all right. Everything was still in its place, where it was supposed to be. Except for the picture over the television. The picture, one that had been taken at their high school graduation, Emma and Aldis and her mother, one that Emma had been terribly proud of, it wasn't there.

"... _Emma_?!" He hollered, startled, and starting to feel alarmed.

Darting out into the kitchen again, he was about to grab the phone and try her cell number in the hopes that she had it with her on her run when he froze, and backed up, slowly. There was a piece of paper magnet-ed to the fridge, a folded piece spread out with Emma's handwriting scrawled across it, her messy letters calling out to him.

_Aldis_ , the letter read, right off the bat.

Tugging it off the fridge, Aldis read it, his heart sinking lower and lower in his stomach, as though it was sinking.

_Aldis. I love you, you know that, but we just can't be together anymore. I'm sorry. The rent is paid up for the rest of the semester anyway, and you can have all of the stuff. I'm sorry. Much love, Emma._

He called her house - because even though they lived here, together, she  _did_  still have her own house, the one she had inherited from her mother - but she didn't answer.

He wasn't sure he'd expected her to.

Hands trembling, he turned the paper over, and swallowed around a lump when he realized that she had written her good-bye letter on the back of her rejection letter. God, was that more cruel to him, or to her?

 

+++

 

Emma liked the idea of sleeping in, in the morning, waking up with the sun spilling golden and bright and warm across her bed, stretching out like a cat in a sunbeam, then roll slowly out of bed, drink a milkshake or something for some energy, then go for a good long run, feeling terribly alive as her heart pounded in her chest and the wind blew through her hair. Getting home, then she would shower, and make herself a good old fashioned dinner of pancakes and scrambled eggs, then sit in front of the computer, and pound out a few thousand words before anything else would happen in her day.

It was a very nice idea, actually.

It was, unfortunately, absolutely not what happened.

When she rolled over that morning, the sky gray and no sun falling in through her windows, Emma squinted at the bedside alarm clock glowing on her bedside table, then yelped in a sort of ear-piercing sound when she realized that the time was considerably later than she had thought it was.

Scrambling out of bed, she barely managed to brush her hair or teeth, and certainly didn't manage a shower as she snatched a cup of coffee and wrestled herself into some clothes.

Dashing outside, her scarf - which was probably longer than would ever be considered practical but it was her Tom Baker Doctor Who scarf, dammit, and the fact that it was over fourteen feet long was really the selling point on it - streaming out behind her, Emma slid into the driver's seat of her crappy little car, forgetting her travel mug of coffee on the roof, and cranked the engine.

It made a feeble little sound, turned over once, then died.

"...you have got to be kidding me," Emma groaned, pathetically, and dropped forward, her forehead landing on the steering wheel.

The horn wailed at her, and she jumped, startled, standing. "...well, son of a bitch."

Emma tried again, to turn the car on. No, six more attempts didn't do anything, and by the time she was done, it wasn't even turning over, anymore, it was just sort of making a little 'rawr rawr rawr' sound, and not going further than that. Furious, she climbed out of the car, kicked the side of it, then howled in pain. Apparently that was also a poor idea.

At least this let her realize that she had left her coffee on the roof, so she snatched that up, and started running.

A bus ride later, and she finally burst into work, breathless.

"You're late."

"Suck it, Matthew," she said, breezing past him and into the back of the store, shedding her scarf. "Has it been busy?"

"That's not the point," he said, leaning in the doorframe of the back room, arms crossed over his lanky chest. "The point is that you were scheduled to start at ten, and it is now nearly eleven."

"I texted you," Emma reminded him, taking a swig of her coffee, then tugged off her jacket, hanging it up on their rickety old wooden coat tree. "So you  _knew_  that I was going to be late. You can't blame me."

"Oh, I absolutely  _can_  blame you," he countered, frowning slightly. "I had paperwork I was supposed to be doing."

"Paperwork," she repeated, leaning on the table as she sipped at her coffee still.

"Paperwork is  _important_ , thank you very much," he rolled his eyes at her, and pushed off the door frame, heading back out into the main body of the store. She followed him out, and together they leaned on the counter, looking out into the store. It was, in fact, empty, as were the hallways of the small mall, beyond their store. That was pretty normal, these days, most of the time it was busy in the evening and the weekends, if it was going to be busy, and the rest of the time, they found themselves bored.

That, apparently, was how the cell phone industry went, these days.

"You hate doing paperwork."

"That's not the point," Matthew pointed out, arms crossed on the counter, and smirked slightly at her. "So... what exactly happened, then?"

"My alarm clock didn't go off, and then, just to make it even better, my car thought that it wasn't worth turning on, either. Going to have to bring it in for repair... any chance to want to give me a raise so that I can afford to get my car fixed?" Emma beamed at him, sweetly, eyelids fluttering.

"Yeah right," he snorted, and flicked at her forehead. "Try and publish a novel, and that will pay for it."

"Yeah, screw you too, Matthew," she grumbled, sipping at her coffee again, brows furrowed.

"No, seriously... weren't you working on sending that urban fantasy one of yours out?" He asked, hunching his shoulders slightly as he considered her, tapping his long lanky fingers on the countertop. "Have you heard anything, yet?"

"A few more rejection letters?" She cleared her throat, shrugging.

"Well, Stephen King said that he got rejected hundreds of times before he got published too, right?" Matthew suggested, clearly trying to be encouraging.

"Yeah, thanks, Matthew," she sighed softly, sipping at her coffee, again.

"Well, you were writing the other day..."

"Yeah,  _that's_  not going to get published," she smirked slightly, rolling her eyes.

"Why not? Is it porn?" He straightened up slightly, frowning at her. "...were you writing porn at work?"

"Of course I was writing porn at work, that's the only way I can get through these damn days," she rolled her eyes again, snickering at the sort of appalled expression that he gave her. "But no, that's not what I meant. I just meant... I can't publish it, cause the stuff is under copyright."

He looked even more confused.

"...I was writing Doctor Who fanfiction, Matthew."

"Oh." He blinked, surprised. "Well then. You could... reuse one of those characters or something, right? Like... make it... not fanfiction?"

"Right. I'll keep that in mind."

"Well, perk up, princess, because I need you to sell some cell phones. Make head office happy."

"Sure thing," she snorted, shaking her head, and pulled out her notebook.

 

+++

 

"Hey! Jenny! You need to get the tow truck!"

Jennifer took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment, then pushed back off the work bench she was sorting through the tools on, and muttered, mostly to herself, "It's  _Jennifer_ ," before she snagged the keys for the tow truck, and headed out into the office to find out where she needed to go.

Maybe it was because it was a new job, or because it was a new city, or because her boss flatly refused to call her anything but  _Jenny_ , but she was often finding herself wondering if maybe she should just fuck off and go back home.

But no, she'd made a new life for herself now, right? A fresh start in a new city. Okay, it wasn't California like she had actually planned, but Portland was...

Interesting.

The tow truck was old, and smelled terribly of gas, but at least it ran, and at least she was out of the garage and away from being called Jenny all the time, so that was something. Flicking the radio on, Jennifer finally relaxed as music spilled out of the cap around her, filling the small, foul smelling space with the sound of guitars. Humming along, she tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, and focused on just getting to where she was going. There was a GPS unit in the car, which was about the only thing she had going for her right at the moment, because if she had to depend on one of the ratty looking paper maps that were shoved in the glove compartment, she would never find her way to anywhere. That was the problem, apparently, with a new city, and though she'd always been good at finding directions, that was usually in a town where she knew where she was going. Hell, she'd lived in the same town for twenty-five years, of course she was having trouble adjusting to a new city.

It was a little house, the address she had scrawled on her clipboard, a small two story home, with a pale green siding and yellow trim, a wide sprawling porch out front with a wooden rocking chair sitting in the corner, as though waiting for someone to come out and read.

There was a car sitting out front, though Jennifer sort of thought that this car was really more rust than  _car_ , which was probably the one that she was supposed to be picking up.

...was she even going to be able to tow that thing without making it fall apart? God, that was a mess.

Shaking her head, she grabbed her jacket off the passenger seat, and tugged it on before she headed for the house. Hopping up onto the porch, she knocked firmly on the storm door, thumbs hooked in her pockets as she stepped back, waiting for someone to answer the door.

"One second!" Someone howled, and Jennifer snickered slightly. No one ever seemed to be ready for the tow truck to come, even when they were the one that had called them.

A minute later, a blond woman came hurtling towards the door, slightly breathless, and Jennifer watched her, idly, though the glass door as she struggled into her boots. Finally, the door opened, and the woman stepped outside, hugging herself slightly, shivering in the early winter air. It wasn't quite snowing yet, but it was certainly getting cooler. Funny, though, because to Jennifer, it was downright balmy out here, right now. Compared to the winters back in Massachusetts...

"Hey," the blond said, offering her hand. "Emma Stone. You're here for the car, right?"

"Mmhmm." Jennifer shook the offered hand, not that she really figured this girl needed to know who she was, and tried not to think about the fact that her asshole boss had gotten the name "JENNY" embroidered on the patch on her jacket. "All right, you got the keys?"

"Oh shit. One second." Emma darted back inside.

Well, that was... really together.

A moment later, the blond reappeared, grinning sheepishly, and offered Jennifer a key ring that had an odd sort of keyfob on it. Jennifer accepted the keys, and flipped the keychain over, trying to figure out what it was, then arched a brow,and looked up at Emma. "...R2D2?"

"...R2D2 is badass." She shrugged. "He's the most potty mouthed character in movies ever."

Jennifer blinked at her. "...what?"

"They had to bleep out everything he said!" Emma quipped, grinning.

"...right."

The other's grin faded a little, her glee at her lame joke fading slightly now that she realized that the other, frankly, just didn't find it all that funny. Clearing her throat, Emma scratched the back of her neck, and nodded at the keychain that Jennifer now held. "So, ah... the key with the Hello Kitty cap on it is the one for the car, do you, ah... need to keep the keys?"

"Well, if you want me to be able to fix it, I'm going to need to be able to get into it." Jennifer pointed out.

"...right. That makes sense. Sorry, I don't really bring my car in for repair all that often."

_Yeah, I can tell_ , Jennifer thought, but she bit her lip, and she didn't say it. What she  _did_  say was, "All right, good, I'm going to get the car hooked up, then, there's some paperwork I need you to fill out while I do that," and offered the girl the clipboard. "Fill it out with your contact information and all that, and we'll get it to the garage so we can get it working."

"Thanks," Emma said, and started scribbling out on the paperwork.

Jennifer's suspicions were confirmed, as it was, when she started hooking up the car. It really  _was_  more rust than car, and when she touched the side of the car, just above the wheel well, it sort of flaked under her fingers, disintegrating. Not much of a car. Still, she got down on her hands and knees so that she could attach the chain to the frame, which at least would let her get it up. As she worked, the rain that had been threatening to begin all day finally hit, and she frowned, flipping the collar of her jacket up as she worked, try to keep the rain from running down her back.

There was the slapping sound of boots on the sidewalk, and Jennifer looked up, then blinked, surprised.

Emma had just come darting out of her house, still wearing those ridiculous yellow rain boots that she had shoved her feet into when Jennifer had arrived, though she had added a scarf that seemed like it was trying to consume her and still had two long tails running down nearly to the ground, and carrying a bright yellow umbrella. Emma grinned at her, and flared the umbrella open, leaning over to hold it above Jennifer's head.

"...what are you doing?" Jennifer asked, at last.

"You looked like you were getting wet. So I'm trying to keep you from, well, getting wet. Least I can do, you're going to fix my car for me," Emma shrugged, and when Jennifer stood to head around to check on the back of the car, she followed her, hurrying to keep the umbrella over her head.

"You do know that you're going to be  _paying_  for me to be fixing this car, right?" Jennifer frowned, checking the wheels.

"Yeah, obviously. But that doesn't mean I can't still be decent, does it?"

She turned to look at Emma, who beamed at her with a completely innocent smile. Good god, she actually really  _did_  just mean to help her out.

"Huh. No, I guess it doesn't." She shrugged, and for the rest of the time that she was hooking the car up, Emma continued to follow her, umbrella held over her head, trying to help keep her dry. Finally, Jennifer declared that the car was ready to go, and took her clipboard back. "All right, we'll give you a call with the diagnosis, tell you what the damage is gonna be... probably tomorrow, you'll hear from us."

"Right." Emma nodded. "Do you think it's going to be expensive?"

"Honestly?" Jennifer glanced at the car. She could lie, she could tell her that it was going to cost her an arm and a leg, inflate the price, but the stupidly innocent girl really  _was_  the type to hold her damn umbrella over people's heads, and that wasn't really her style anyway. So whatever. "It sounds like you just need a new battery. But this..."

"Piece of shit, you can say it." She said, shrugging, still holding the damn umbrella. "It's a piece of shit car, don't worry, I'm not offended."

She frowned for a moment, then glanced at the car. "All right, then... this  _car_  looks like it might have a few other issues, anyway, so if nothing else, you really need a full check out. Just make sure it's working."

"...sure, but can you, um..." Emma sighed, heavily, and scratched the back of her neck again. Seemed sort of a nervous gesture. "Okay, I need the car to  _run_ , but I don't need it to be... running well?"

"...you want a slap job, patch job to get it going?" Jennifer hooked her thumbs into her jeans pockets, the clipboard tucked under her arm, frowning. She had heard _that_  request a few thousand times before. A lot of people treated their cars like an afterthought, which sort of bothered her. They depended on it, expected it to take them everywhere, but treated it like shit, and then got mad at it when it didn't treat them exactly like they expected it to.

"...as much as I'd hate to say it, at the moment, I'm sort of... broke. So... yeah."

Jennifer frowned, but nodded. "All right, will do."

"Thanks." She grinned, sort of sheepishly. "So, ah... call from you tomorrow, you said?"

"Probably. Could be today." She shrugged.

"Well, you're the expert." Emma grinned, and hesitated, then thrust the umbrella towards her. "Here, use this, you can just leave it in the car when you're done fixing everything."

"I can't use an umbrella when I'm pulling the car down off the truck." Jennifer arched a brow.

"Well... use it anyway. Maybe you need it." Emma grinned. "Trust me."

 

+++

 

"So," Matthew leaned on the counter beside Emma, elbows resting on it as he did, looking over her notebook. Emma simply slid the notebook out of his way, calmly. "How's the car situation?"

"It's in the shop," she said, looking up from the notebook, crossing her arms on the counter.

"Oh yeah? Were you actually able to drive it there?"

"...I had to get it towed," she admitted, sighing slightly, flushed as she finally just flicked the notebook shut, because apparently she wasn't really going to get anything finished, anyway. "So  _that's_  another hundred bucks down the drain..."

"Ouch." He crinkled his nose, reaching up to push his glasses up. "Yeah, that's not awesome at all."

"Yeah, well... that's life, apparently."

"Make lemonade?" He grinned.

"What, when life hands you lemons? Fuck that, when life hands you lemons, make a lemon cannon and whip those damn lemons  _right back_  and add a few lemons of your own!" Emma slapped her palm down on the counter, snickering. "You can't let life walk all over you like that, man, you have to grab it by the balls and make it pay for that damn attempt on your happiness!"

"...mmhmm." Matthew arched a brow, smirking slightly, shaking his head. "You're a unique girl, sometimes, Emma."

"That's why you hired me," she said, loftily.

"Bullshit, I hired you because you had a fantastic ass," he rolled his eyes.

"Sexual harassment! That's totally sexual harassment!" She laughed, body checking him with no real conviction, and just laughed when he pushed her back, and they sort of pushed back and forth for a few moments. One of the random customers of the mall walked past the store, giving them a wide eyed look, but they weren't actually coming into  _their_  store, so what did it matter, really, they just sort of goofed off and enjoyed their moment, because dammit, if they didn't have any customers, shouldn't they be allowed to  _enjoy_  their job? "Ooooh, I am going to report you to someone, Matthew Gray Gubler, you are going to pay for that!"

"Why are you complaining?" He cackled, pushing back. "You got a job out of it!"

"On virtue of my  _ass_?" Emma snorted, and ruffled his hair.

"Well, it  _is_  a fantastic ass," he snickered, and just yelped when she grabbed her notebook and whacked him upside the head with it.

They finally settled a little, relaxing as they stilled, just leaning on the counter as the two of them just looked out over the little store and out into the mall, watching people pass, just quiet. There were the usual sorts, and as they stood there watching, they would occasionally poke fun at one of the people walking past, amused.

"A wild snorlax appears," Emma muttered, as a rather portly woman in a pink t-shirt waddled past.

The snort that Matthew let out wasn't exactly flattering.

Snickering, she shook her head, then pushed off the counter, and pulled up the news on the computer, humming slightly as she scrolled through the main stories.

"That doesn't look like work," Matthew said, chin in hand as he watched her.

"So it isn't," she agreed, clearly not caring as she continued scrolling. "God, the world is such a messed up place."

"Mmm. Yeah." He agreed, nodding. "Why, what did the world do to you today?"

"A dude in Florida ate a guy's face."

He stopped, blinked, and twisted to look at her, properly. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"A dude in Florida ate a guy's face," Emma repeated, frowning as she read the article, lips pursed slightly. "Huh. They say that they think he was on Bath Salts."

"...Bath Salts?" He repeated. "What do baths have to do with  _eating faces_?!"

"Bath Salts!" She snorted, and swatted his shoulder. "It's a designer drug. They can't really make it illegal because every time that they figure out the formula, they just change the formula again. I dunno, I saw a thing on Dateline about it... apparently it's some pretty powerful shit, anyway, the cops say that they think that he was taking that stuff, and he just... decided to start nomming on a dude's face. They had to  _shoot_  him, to get him off of him."

"Did they kill the guy?" He leaned closer, frowning as he considered the screen.

"Yep."

"That's so fucked up," he muttered, shuddering.

"Oh!" Emma yelped, gaping at the screen. "The dude that got his face eaten is still  _alive_! Ugh, I wouldn't want to live without a  _face_ , could you imagine?!"

"Well, I mean, did he eat his whole face, or..."

Emma had scrolled down the page, and a picture that apparently no one had seen fit to mark as Not Safe For Work or even just mature content or  _something_ popped up, and they both shrieked, and bolted back from the computer, absolutely horrified.

"Oh my god!" Emma yelped.

"Oh, I'm going to be sick..." Matthew groaned, reeling back from the computer, bending double, hands on his knees.

"That is  _not right_ ," she declared, closing the window so that they no longer had to look at what was, in fact, a picture of a man that had gotten his face eaten by a man apparently on drugs. It was an absolutely horrific sight, a bloody, eye-less mess. "...remind me to never take Bath Salts. I don't think I could live with myself if I ate a dude's face like that..."

"Oh yeah, I'm gonna puke," he groaned, and bolted for the back room.

She winced, scratching the back of her neck as she leaned in the back room, and called, "I'm sorry!"

"Not your fault!" He called back from behind the closed bathroom door.

"...want me to get you some coffee or something?"

"Oh god, no." he called back, and then Emma was darting back out onto the floor, quickly, flushed as she tried not to listen to the sound of Matthew apparently having a problem with the face-eaten man's picture.

A few minutes later, Matthew finally returned to the main floor of the store, embarrassed as he leaned on the counter. "...well, that was... gross."

"It's an effective diet?" She joked, weakly. "Think about it, every time you think that you really want to go eat something, look at that picture, and you'll never eat again!"

He groaned, and shook his head, leaning on the counter again, as though he couldn't quite support his own weight. "No, eventually it would lose its power..."

"Maybe, but it's a shock diet." Emma considered that. "You'd just have to find the next most shocking image once that one wore off, then the next one after that, and after that..."

"Until eventually you're shooting a man and ripping out his intestines just to convince yourself not to eat that bag of potato chips," Matthew pointed out, and sighed heavily, dropping his forehead onto the counter. "All right," he declared, suddenly. "You promise not to wreck my car, right?"

"I would never wreck your car," Emma pressed her hand to her chest, scoffing. "Though I'm not sure why I'd been  _in_  your car..."

"Because  _your_  car is still in the garage." He straightened, and dug in his pocket for a moment before dropping the keys in her hand. "And I  _really_  want a coffee from Stumptown, and because it's all you and your news' fault that I am feeling like shit and in the need for coffee, I think  _you_  are going to have to be the one that needs to go and get me some. So. Get me my latte, wench."

She rolled her eyes, but shoved his keys in the pocket of the front of her dress, and headed into the back to get her jacket and her purse. "Fine, but you owe me."

"How do  _I_  owe you, when this is all your fault?!" He called back.

Snickering, Emma headed for the door, her fingers curled around his keys in her pocket, scarf flapping behind her as she walked. "Be back soon! If I'm not back in half an hour, then maybe you should send out a search party for me, because I've probably run off to Mexico, or something!"

"You're not going to go to Mexico, you wouldn't be able to drink their water!"

Matthew's car was a lot nicer than hers was, if only because it was less than ten years old, it was not just a rust bucket, and hell, it even had an iPod dock built into it. And yes, she took advantage of that, thumping her iPod in and signing along with  _her_  music as she drove, grinning, tapping her fingers on his leatherette steering wheel as she drove. It  _was_  a nice car, but it just didn't have the character that hers did, as far as she was concerned, she'd rather have a car with character than a car that ran nicely.

...all right, that was a blatant lie that she told to make herself feel a little bit better, but that was the sort of lies that people tell themselves.

Pulling into the little parking lot outside of Stumptown Coffee, she flicked his boring but well running car off, shoved his keys in her pocket, and headed inside, to get their drinks.

As she had expected, there were a few other people ahead of her in line, so she got into line, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her dress, rocking slightly side to side. It was still fairly warm out, though it was considered winter, so the scarf was really enough, but thank god, unlike yesterday, it wasn't raining. It would probably rain tomorrow, it was the rainy season, after all, but at the moment it was dry. Good thing, too, as the mechanic still had her umbrella with her car, which was still in the shop, and...

Emma stopped her thoughts in their track, and twisted to look over at one of the people waiting for their drink at the opposite end of the counter.

_Speak of the devil..._

The woman standing at the counter was definitely her mechanic, still wearing the oil-stained rough work jacket that she had been wearing yesterday, thumbs hooked in her pockets again. As Emma watched, one of the servers handed her a mug, and she nodded, and headed over to one of the little tables, sitting down with her drink. Emma watched her, for a long moment, until she realized that the barista behind the counter was trying to ask her what she was wanting to order, and Emma started, embarrassed, and gave her and Matthew's orders.

A few minutes later, paper drink cups in hand, she headed for the door, then hesitated, and doubled back. Stepping up beside the table her mechanic sat at, she cleared her throat, and said, "Hey!"

The dark haired girl looked up sharply, startled, eyes wide for a moment, then her shoulders slumped. "Oh. Hey."

"How're you doing?" Emma asked, then realized that this probably seemed really creepy, as this was just her  _mechanic_ , and she didn't even know her  _name_... her eyes flicked to the name tag embroidered on her chest, and it said "JENNY". Well then, guess she  _did_  know her name.

"Fine," she shrugged, shoulders hunched slightly as she cradled her mug. Sort of seemed a protective gesture, like she wanted to be shielded. "...you?"

"Just great, though it's not much fun without my car." Emma shrugged, smiling at her. "Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you, or anything, I just spotted you, and thought I'd say hi. I don't really run into my mechanic on a regular basis. Actually, I don't really  _have_  a mechanic, to be honest."

"I figured. Your car needs a lot of work." She smirked, slightly. "When's the last time it had an oil change?"

"Ah! That was... um." Emma drooped slightly, pursing her lips. "...about... a year ago?"

"That's... better than I thought." Jennifer shook her head. "I was going to call you after my break, actually. I don't have the quote here, of course, but, ah... it  _was_  the battery. But there are definitely a few other things you need to have looked at, even just to keep it running for now..."

"Nngh, yeah... I thought so." Emma sighed, shaking her head. "Well... whatever you can do as cheap as possible? I promise, I'll find a way to pay it. It... may take a few credit cards. But I'll find a way to do it."

She nodded, quietly, then abruptly offered her hand, a copy of what Emma had done, yesterday. "Jennifer Lawrence."

Emma grinned, and shook her hand, cheerfully. "A pleasure."

"Still want me to call you, when I get back to the shop?" Jennifer lowered her hand, sipping at her drink. "Make it official, and all that?"

"Naw, consider this my official approval." She shrugged, pleased. "I trust you, you're a good mechanic."

"You hope." She smirked from behind her paper cup.

"...yes, yes I do." Emma laughed, impressed. Apparently the mechanic  _did_  have a sense of humour, after all.

"I'm good at my job," Jennifer said, shaking her head slightly. "Relax."

"Yeah, I can - oh shit, I should, ah... I should probably get going," she cleared her throat, glancing at her watch. "Or my boss is going to  _kill_  me. He sent me with his car out to get coffee, so... I should probably get back to work..."

"Yeah, probably a good idea," She nodded.

"Nice to see you." Emma waved at Jennifer, slightly awkwardly, as she was holding a paper cup in each hand. "I'll, ah... see you when I go to pick up my car. And, you know, pay you."

"You'd better." She agreed.

When Emma finally got back to work, it had been somewhat longer than half an hour - though Emma was quick to point out, when Matthew complained, that it had been less than an hour and he hadn't actually gotten a customer in the entire time that she was gone, anyway, so dammit, he could relax about it - she offered him his latte, and settled down just inside the door that led into the back room with her coffee and a notebook. Here, she could see the floor well enough to run and help anyone that might happen to come in, but she could also relax a little.

Matthew leaned against the counter, arms crossed, and stared at her.

Emma decided to ignore him. She simply sipped at her coffee, jotting down in her notebook, working at scribbling down at least  _something_ , even if it was just a new chapter for her self-insertion Emma-as-a-companion Doctor Who fanfic, but at least it was words, right? Sipping still at her coffee, she finally, without actually looking up, demanded, "Can I help you with something, Matthew?"

"So what's his name?"

Arching a brow, she finally looked up from her notebook. "Excuse me?"

"What's his name?"

"Whose name are you talking about?" She sipped again, frowning slightly as she considered her boss. Her manager and her got along very well, they joked about things, goofed off, even at work, had fun... but sometimes she wasn't sure what the hell he was thinking.

"They guy that kept you, when you went for coffee." Matthew said, arms still crossed over his chest.

"...what  _are_  you talking about?" Emma snorted.

"You must have been talking to a guy! That must have been why you got distracted, because you were talking to a guy!"

Finally realizing what the hell he was talking about, she rolled her eyes, and flopped back in her rollie chair, shaking her head. "No, Matthew, I wasn't talking to a guy. Sorry, but you know as well as everyone else that I don't date. So no, I wasn't talking to a guy."

"Then who  _were_  you talking to, then?" He demanded.

"What makes you think I was talking to anyone?"

"Well, you  _must_  have been talking to someone, because you just... disappeared for almost an hour, and the coffee shop is only ten minutes down the road!"

Emma sighed, dramatically, and waved his demands off with her notebook, rolling her eyes. "All right, all right, mister demanding, I was talking to my mechanic."

"Aha!" He shouted, making her jump. "There  _is_  a guy!"

"Um... no, there isn't."

"Well... you just said..." Matthew hesitated.

"Misogynist prick." She said, with a slight smirk, crossing her legs as she sipped at her coffee, and snickered at the way he blinked at her, sort of stunned.

"...a  _chick_  mechanic?"

"That sort of thing  _can_  happen, you know," Emma rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she leaned back, shrugging. "So relax. I just wanted to check and see how my car is doing."

"Oh." He frowned. "That was it?"

"What, you were expecting me to admit that I am absolutely in love with someone that I haven't yet managed to mention at work yet, and that I am planning on running off into the sunset with some dude? Yeah, right. That's not gonna happen, Matthew, but now you should know that."

"Oh yes, I'd forgotten that your ovaries have been taken over with cobwebs, and there's dust in your womb," he rolled his eyes.

"Oi, just because I don't want children doesn't mean I'm  _incapable_  of being in a relationship." She snorted.

"Nope, for chicks, those two things go hand in hand," he snickered, sipping at his latte. "You cannot date someone without your baby clock abruptly going into overdrive."

"...one more sexist comment, Matthew, and I'm going to throw something at you."

He grinned, deviously, and said, "Tits or GTFO."

And he just cackled when she whipped her notebook at him, ducking out of the way.

 

+++

 

"Well,  _that_  car looks like shit."

"Thanks, I hadn't noticed," Jennifer said, calmly, working on some of the undercarriage bits of Emma's car, because apparently she couldn't stop doing that. There was a lot of work that needed to be done on it, more than she had originally thought, but at least it was running again - she was mostly just finishing up the little things, checking filters, checking the brakes, all of that. Laying on her back on her wheeled platform, she glanced over at movement beside the car, steel toed boots walking past her, towards her, then a heavy foot landed on the side of her wheeled platform. It made the wood rumble under her, slightly, and she lowered her hands, just in case.

For a good reason, actually, because a moment later, the foot on the edge of her platform pulled her back out, and Jennifer rested her hands on her stomach, looking up at Tom.

He smirked, leaning over her, his hand resting on the hood of Emma's terrible car. "Well then, why are you working on it?"

"Because I'm getting paid to work on cars?" She pointed out, arching a single brow.

"Yeah, I dunno, seems like the strangest thing in the world for a mechanic to do." Tom teased, smirking slightly. "No, really... for a car like this, the most humane thing you can do is take it out and shoot it."

"Naw... it's not so bad." She shook her head. "It just needs a little TLC."

"TLC in this case refers to Tender Loving  _Corrosion_ ," he tapped a patch of rust, and watched as the metal actually crumpled under his fingers. "I mean, I guess you could patch this thing, but if you did, god, you'd have more patch than car. It's a mess."

"I'm not going to argue with you," Jennifer shrugged, and slid back under the car again, intending to get back to work on the repair.

Seconds later, Tom pulled her right back out again, and she sighed.

"I do my job better if you let me do it, Tom." She pointed out, frustrated. She didn't really feel like playing his games, not now, not really ever. She had other things on her mind, like getting this fucking car  _finished_  before she went home for the end of the day.

"So I hear. So. How about we go out for drinks, tonight?"

Jennifer arched a brow. "Did you seriously interrupt my working to ask me if I wanted to go out for  _drinks_?"

"Yeah, if you want to think about it that way," he snickered, grinning.

"No." Jennifer said, calmly, and rolled back under the car, getting back to work.

This time, when Tom started tugging her out again, she curled her fingers around one of the support struts, and held on. She stayed still, despite his tugging, and Tom let out a heavy sigh, before saying, seriously, "Why don't you want to go out? I promise, the bar isn't so bad, it's a nice place, you can just come and grab some drinks, maybe dance a little if you're feeling up for it or something..."

"I am not feeling up for dancing, I am not feeling up for drinks... and even if I were, I wouldn't go out for drinks with you, Tom."

"Oi." He sounded downright offended. "What, what's wrong with going out for drinks with  _me_?"

Jennifer let out a huff of breath, and planted her feet on the floor, properly, using them to tug herself right out from under the car again. Frowning up at him, she said, "I'm sure you're a nice guy, Tom, you seem... very funny, very nice. But I don't believe in mixing work with pleasure."

"...you're already dating someone else, aren't you?" Tom's eyes narrowed. "You could have just  _said_."

"I'm not dating anyone else." She said, resting her wrench on her stomach. "I moved here because I just had a massive break up. I'd been in a relationship for ten years, and it  _just_  ended. So no, I'm not dating someone, but I am  _not_  going to date for awhile. And, even if I  _was_ , I wouldn't be dating someone from work, because I actually  _don't_  believe in mixing work with pleasure. Can I go back to work, now?"

Tom frowned, but let his foot drop off her cart, and stood. "All right, sorry I asked. I'll back off."

"Thanks." She smiled, faintly, and watched him walk away before she rolled back under the car again. It was frustrating, though, that had taken a good chunk of time from her. She'd have to fix the last of this tomorrow. It wasn't work on the list, anyway, it was a... general check up. Or at least that's what she would be telling her boss, long run.

A half hour later found her done work, and heading to take care of some of the 'housekeeping' stuff that she had been putting off for far too long. She'd been in town almost a month now, maybe it was time she started dealing with things that seemed simple enough to begin with, like getting her phone number changed. It was still a Massachusetts number, maybe she might actually want to get on getting an Oregon number, because otherwise, she was going to be racking up some major long distance bills. Phone in hand, she headed into the local store for her company, just to get the number changed.

Only  _Emma_  was the one standing behind the counter, attention on the notebook she was scribbling in, not on her.

Stepping closer, Jennifer rested her arms on the raised bit of the counter across from Emma, and cleared her throat. To her credit, the blond looked up sharply, immediately, a bright smile blossoming on her face as though she actually  _was_ happy to be interrupted by customers, but Jennifer had seen a fake smile or two in her life - and she'd seen a couple real smiles on this very same girl's face, now, so she knew that this fake smile wasn't the same thing - and said, cheerfully, "Hey, can I help you with - Jennifer!"

"I'm not sure you can help me with Jennifer, but I have brought my own." She said, calmly, and it was sort of gratifying, the way that Emma laughed, grinning. "So  _this_ is where you work, hm?"

"Oh god, when you say it that way, it sounds totally sordid." She groaned, and let her forehead thump against the counter. "Like I've been keeping it a secret or something, and you've been trying to work it out, or something..."

"Yes, well... I suppose I could have just gone through your car and see if I found anything there that would have told me, but that seemed a little too stalkery."

"What, and finding out where I worked to just come in and stalk me isn't?" Emma laughed, lifting her head to look back at her, again.

"I wasn't stalking you." Jennifer held up her phone. "I need my number changed."

"Oh!" She perked up, at that. "I can do that!"

"Yeah?" She asked, leaning on the counter again, setting her phone between them.

"Oh yeah, totally, we can change numbers. What's the current number?" She asked, grabbing a stack of sticky notes, and a pen, and scribbled it down, then turned to the computer, getting to work. "Holy crap. You might want to change your address, too."

"Right, forgot about that," Jennifer frowned, and nodded.

"Danvers, Massachusetts." Emma looked up from the computer, and Jennifer shrugged. "Wow, that's, ah... a bit of a trip away. What made you move to Portland?"

"My car broke."

It was an honest answer, but it was still hilarious, the way that Emma blinked at her, gaping at her in shock, so she laughed, and shrugged.

"...your car broke?" Emma repeated.

"Yeah, my car broke. A bunch of stuff changed back home... my relationship fell apart, I lost my job, my best friend moved away... it was a bad month, let's put it that way. So I packed up to go visit my best friend in Washington, then I was planning on going down to California." She shrugged. Jennifer always considered herself a private person, but she would tell people the truth about certain things. It was the  _truth_ , she wasn't lying about a word she had said, but it was  _vague_ , and that was the thing about it. It was vague and light and though it told people about her, it didn't really give  _details_. "So on my way down to California, when I was going through Portland, my car broke. It was a timing belt, not such a hard thing to _fix_ , really, except that I had to have the proper tools, and mine were packed away in the back of my car, and... yeah. Stopped at a garage to ask to borrow some, and go figure. I got a job offer, and here I am."

"In my store, wanting to change your phone number. Speaking of... we have five options, like any of them?" Emma turned the sticky pad towards her.

Jennifer snorted, amused by the rapid fire topic change, and accepted it, looking over the list before selecting one.

"Mmm... oh! Fees!" She yelped, as though she hadn't thought of it before. "There's going to be a twenty dollar fee on your bill, and there's a twenty - ah. Yeah. Twenty dollar fee on your bill. Is that... ah... okay?"

Considering the other girl, Jennifer arched a brow. Yeah, she could tell that she had just taken back something she was about to say. But she hadn't said it, and it would hardly be polite to push, was it? So she shrugged, and nodded, and said, "Fine, go ahead, I need the new phone number more than anything else."

"Right!" Emma chirped, and set to work finishing it.

"Though, so far, the thing I'm discovering, more than anything else, is that Portland is apparently a very small city," Jennifer said, calmly, leaning on the counter, watching Emma work.

"It's a big city," Emma blinked at her, surprised.

"No, I don't think it is," she shook her head, smirking slightly. "It's very small. How many times, exactly, have I run into you in this town?"

The blond pursed her lips. "...okay, a few times..."

"A lot of times. If I didn't know that it was an accident, I would think that you keep stalking me." Jennifer snorted.

"It's like our life is a romantic comedy, or something," Emma laughed, grinning. "Except for the fact that we're both girls, I mean, the only way that it would actually work is if one of us was a guy... hate to tell you this, but you're the mechanic, you're the one that would probably be a guy in this situation. I mean, not that two girls can’t have a romantic comedy, but let’s be honest here, this is twenty first century America, and people are still repressed as shit, so  _one_  of us naturally has to become a dude for this. That’s just how Hollywood’s rules work. Either way. So we're living in the middle of a romantic comedy trope that would have us being set up for, I dunno, a star crossed romance, or something."

Laughing, she said, "A romantic comedy  _trope_?"

"...I have a degree in English." Emma admitted, flushed, shrugging. "So, um... paper work! I just need you to sign saying you're okay with me changing your number, and that you know that there's going to be that one twenty dollar fee on your account, but..."

Jennifer snagged a pen out of the little cup of pens, and scribbled out her name where Emma indicated, and then slid the papers back to her.

A few minutes later, finally Emma slid her phone back, and said, cheerfully, "Phone number changed, address changed, did a test call, your phone is up and running on the new number, and - um. Is there something else wrong with it?"

Jennifer smirked, still holding her phone out to Emma. "No, but you haven't put your phone number in it, yet."

"...am I supposed to put my number in it?"

"Yes, you're supposed to put your number in, we keep running into each other on a regular basis, I sort of think that we probably should actually be able to keep in touch with each other, just in case. So if we're going to be stalking each other, maybe we should be doing it on  _purpose_."

"Are you suggesting we hang out sometime, or something?" The other woman smirked, as she tapped her phone number and name into the phone.

"Well, I have to meet people in this town  _somehow_ , don't I?" Jennifer drawled.

"That's one way of thinking about it." The blond offered the phone back, slightly flushed.

"Good," She tapped out a text message to Emma's number, so that the other would get the number sent to her phone, then tucked the phone into her pocket, and crossed her arms on the edge of the counter again. "Look, it's Friday, so how about we hang out tonight? I mean, unless you had plans?"

"Emma?  _Plans_?" A stranger walking past, from outside and heading straight towards the back room, scoffed as he passed. "Ha! Yeah right!"

"Fuck you, Matthew!" Emma called after him.

Jennifer arched a brow, watching the guy disappear into the back room. "...who's that?"

"My boss," she muttered, flushed, and scratched the back of her neck. "He's an asshole. And he's right, dammit, I don't have any plans, so  _yes_ , I would love to hang out with you tonight."

"There's a bar down the street from my apartment... drinks?"

"Sure," she nodded.

"Well, as I still have your car in my shop..." Jennifer grinned, and delighted in the way that the other flushed, embarrassed, and ducked her head. It was sort of hilarious. "I'll pick you up. And, like a proper stalker, I already know where you live, so..."

"I get off work at nine. That's not too late?"

"Naw. Hell, I can pick you up here, if you want...?" Jennifer offered.

Emma looked down at herself. "I guess I could wear this out for drinks..."

She looked the blond up and down, considering that. It was a simple white dress she wore, peasant style sliced up into sections by black lace, black tights, and a nearly knee high pair of black boots. Far more classy than the yellow rain boots she'd been wearing the other day. Far as Jennifer was concerned, it was stylish, and it was far girlier and dressier than probably anything that Jennifer had ever worn in her life. Sort of made the greasy mechanic's kit that she was still wearing from work seem even more filthy. "Naw, you look great. Wear that. I'll try and get a _little_  less oily before I pick you up."

"Probably a good idea," she grinned. "Otherwise they might kick you out of the bar."

"Oh, I didn't pick any place  _that_  nice," she smirked, and waved at her as she headed for the door. "See you at nine, then!"

And, as she headed out of the room, she heard that apparent asshole boss of hers say, "Did you remember to charge her the number change fee?"

And Emma answering with a, "Oops. Guess I forgot."

_Knew it._


	2. Chapter 2

Emma darted out of the mall at nine oh one, the moment that work was done and the totals were submitted and everything was locked up, scarf fluttering around her legs as she hesitated, looking to try and figure out where Jennifer might be, and hoping desperately that she hadn't just been stood up. Frankly, a ride home was a big enough thing that it would make her life so much easier, but going out for drinks and actually having something of a social life? That hadn't been something she had a lot, lately, so she was more than willing to take the other woman up on that one.

 

Hesitating slightly, she bit her lip, looking around. Where was she...?

An older model car, small but functional, pulled up beside the sidewalk, and Jennifer leaned over to push the passenger door open, and called, "C'mon in!"

Grinning, Emma darted into the car, slipping into the seat and pulling the door shut behind her. It was refreshingly warm inside the car, and she happily leaned back in her seat, letting out a little sigh of relief, basking in the warmth that soaked into her bones. "Mmm... hey."

"Hey," Jennifer said, pulling out from the sidewalk and heading down towards the road.

Wiggling a little in her seat, she considered the other woman, and said, cheerfully, "You clean up really well, actually. No one would ever know you were a mechanic."

She did, too. Her dark hair was tied back in a braid that ran down her back with only the littlest wisps of curls sneaking out of the plaits, a pair of skinny jeans, and a red plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Granted, the style was a little similar to what one might think of a mechanic wearing, but she didn't have grease smeared on her cheek anymore, and it looked like she had scrubbed her hands to get the oil out from under her nails. Well done, all things considered.

"Thanks," Jennifer smirked, glancing over at her. "You seem to be wearing the exact same thing you were wearing earlier."

"Oi, well... you said that I  _could_  wear the same thing, and even if you hadn't said okay, I would have still worn it, because I have this whole issue where I didn't have any clothes to wear at work. I just had the clothes I was wearing."

"Hm. If you worked in a clothing store, you would have had plenty of other options."

"True," Emma agreed. "But I work in a cell phone store. So other than maybe having a different phone for every outfit, I'm not sure how working there would help me out if I was going out to the bar. So! You're new to Portland, hm? How long have you been here, then?"

Jennifer mulled over that for a moment, as Emma watched her. "Almost a month, now. Twenty-seven days, I guess. Why?"

"Well, just wondered how much of a wonderful Portland life you've managed to experience, yet," she grinned, mischievously. "I've been here for fifteen years, so I've managed to experience fifteen wonderful years of the Portland life, and I wondered how long you'd be able to stand it before you screamed and ran away into the sunset."

She snorted. "You've managed fifteen years."

"Yeah, but I had incentive... I own a  _house_  here, so I'm not likely to run off into the sunset until I manage to sell the place. Besides, this is also my alma mater. I went to school here."

"Ah." Jennifer nodded. "So that house, you own it, hm?"

"Oh yeah, that's me, rich landowner girl," Emma snorted, grinning as she relaxed back in her seat. She'd forgotten how much fun it was, to just go out with friends, and laugh and talk and not have to have a stupid goal in mind, it was just fun. "Actually, I didn't have to do any work, I inherited the house."

"Oh, I see." She said, grinning at her, briefly, and tapped her fingertips on her steering wheel. "Grandparents?"

"My mom, actually, she left the house to me. I didn't even live in it, for a few years after she died, I just... couldn't bear to be in  _her_  house, you know? So finally, I ended up moving back there, and... well. It's my house. Not even too bad, though it could use a new roof, and if I'm honest with myself, I probably ought to look into replacing the furnace, because those things don't last forever..."

"Sounds awfully complicated."

" _Is_  awfully complicated," she agreed, picking at her tights.

"Well then, remind me not to buy a house. At least not in Portland, apparently the houses in Portland need furnace replacing and roof repairing. Sounds like a lot of work."

Emma laughed. "I'm pretty sure houses in almost any city or town require that, actually."

"Well, then maybe I ought to keep renting."

"The way I hear it, renting is considerably easier than home owning," she said, content as she stretched, spine cracking as the other pulled into a parking lot, and she leaned forward, peering through the windshield at the neon sign of the bar, considering that. "Barracuda? Never been here before. It any good?"

"No idea," Jennifer shrugged, turning the car off. "I've only been in town for twenty-seven days, remember? I'm not much of a drinker, so I haven't actually been to _any_  bar. But I did a quick Google, asked what the best bars in Portland were... and this is what it pulled up. So... guess we'll see if it's any good, huh?" The other slid out of the driver's seat, stretching.

Emma slid out of her own seat, her purse swung over her shoulder, and nudged the other girl's hip. "Ready?"

"Ready, c'mon."

When they stepped inside, Emma stopped for a moment, slightly startled, and looked up at Jennifer, who was definitely taller than her ( _dammit_ ). "I'm pretty sure this is more of a club than a bar."

"I think you're right." She agreed, pursing her lips for a moment, considering the man that was guarding the door, and glanced back at Emma. "You sure you want to stay here, or do you want to go find a different place?"

"Naw, clubs are fun, I have ID and everything," Emma grinned, already starting to get into this idea.

It had been a long time since she had really gone to a  _club_ , not since she was engaged to Aldis, she didn't think, but they used to do this on weekends, meet up with their friends and go out for a night that was loud and raucous and  _fun_. Now that they were inside, she could feel the music start to pound in the marrow of her bones, reminding her that she used to love to dance, to feel the rhythm sinewing its way through her body as she let herself move in time to it. This used to be what she loved. Now that she was inside, she didn't want to leave, she wanted to drink and dance and have  _fun_. Jennifer seemed like she could be fun, too.

"All right," Jennifer shrugged, digging her wallet out of her back pocket. "If you're sure."

"I'm sure," she laughed, and grabbed the other girl's hand, tugging her into the club proper the moment that the bouncer had passed their IDs as acceptable, and right into the midst of the sound and the movement and the music. "Come on, there's no point in being alive if you're not living!"  
  
She could hear Jennifer laughing, and chose not to mention, at that moment, that she hadn't really been doing a whole lot of living for the last... ooh, six years or so?  
  
It was like it all came back to her in a rush, the thrill of moving her hips to the beat, the way that her blood used to sing when the music shimmied its way through her veins, the instant intoxication of just being in the setting, whether she'd gotten a drink in her system yet or not. It was just  _living_ , free and wild and powerful, and she'd forgotten exactly how much she loved it, this feeling of living her whole life, for that moment, on the dance floor. Emma didn't even want to hit the bar first, she didn't need liquid courage to get the desire to dance running, she already wanted to let it all out on the dance floor.  
  
Jennifer seemed a little more reluctant, so she figured maybe in a couple songs she would drag her over for a drink, get her a little more loosened up - this was supposed to be girl's night out or something like that, she supposed they'd never actually  _called_  it that, but this was supposed to be fun, they should be having some  _fun_ , dammit - but the other  _did_  let Emma drag her onto the dance floor, and she considered that a monumental success.  
  
The thing about alcohol at a club, generally, is that it convinces a person to not feel self-conscious about the fact that they're terrible dancers.   
  
Emma, however, not only knew that she was a terrible dancer already, but she didn't give a shit.   
  
Laughing, she kept a tight grip on Jennifer's hand so that they didn't manage to lose each other in the crowd, which wasn't huge and crushing by any means, but was certainly large enough that there was an impressive amount of people, long run, the full gamut of all the clubbing types moving and bobbing and weaving around them, and Emma laughed, feeling more alive than she could remember feeling in years, and playfully spun herself around, as though they were tango dancing or something.  
  
What made her happy, though, was that Jennifer didn't argue or roll her eyes, just laughed and swung her around, again and again, until Emma wished that she had worn a full skirt instead of her short dress, because it would have flared out beautifully, like a flamenco dancer or something.  
  
Dizzy, she clutched at the other's hands, and laughed, "Okay,  _now_  I think I need a drink!"  
  
Jennifer laughed, clearly amused, but she was still nice enough to squeeze Emma's hands and tug her towards one of those little round tables that dotted the edge of the dance floor, sit her down, and tell her that she'd be right back before winding her way through the crowd towards the bar.  
  
Emma laughed, breathlessly, and settled back in her high seat, hands resting on her stomach, panting breathlessly. That had been fun, even better than she remembered, though clearly she was going to need to get back on those morning runs again, because she was feeling completely out of breath. Needed to get back into shape, as it were. Her cheeks felt hot, so she knew that she had to be flushed pink, and Emma was grateful for the fact that the club was almost dark, with those bright flashing lights on the dance floor, because otherwise she would look seriously embarrassed, about something or other. Still, that was fun. Clearly this hanging out with friends idea  _was_  a good one, because she hadn't felt this alive in a long time. Maybe Jennifer was a good influence - even if she  _did_  still have her car in the garage.  
  
Speaking of Jennifer, actually, the other girl suddenly appeared, a few moments later, clambering up into her own seat as she set a glass of something bright neon blue in front of Emma. "Drink up," she grinned.  
  
"...what is it?" Emma asked, suspiciously, tugging the glass closer, and sniffing at the contents. It was certainly bubbly, and the smell reminded her vaguely of those candy hearts that people give out at Valentine's.  
  
"It's called an electric popsicle," she answered, sipping at her own. "Go on, try it, it's good."  
  
"It looks like it's made out of neon  _something_ ," she said, warily, leaning down so that she could try and peer through the mostly opaque liquid. "...I'm usually a whiskey or rye type of gal, what, exactly, is  _this_  made of?"  
  
"Sprite, blue caraco, and banana liqueur," Jennifer smirked. "And I'm a girly drink drunk, and you specified 'a drink', not on what type you'd like, so I got you what I was drinking, and if you don't  _want_  it..."  
  
"Oh no, I'll drink it. Try anything once, that's what I always say." Emma said, boldly, and picked it up, sipping it up through the straw. It  _tasted_  like those Valentines conversation hearts, too, and her eyes widened dramatically in shock. "Well!"  
  
Jennifer laughed, taking far too much enjoyment in Emma's distress, if you asked her, and sipped at her own drink before saying, confidently, "I believe that you have to try everything at least twice, otherwise you'll find yourself wondering if maybe you just didn't enjoy it the first time because you were stressed. Or because they just sucked."  
  
 _That_  made Emma snort her extremely girly drink, and pressed her hand to her nose, wincing. " _Ow_..."  
  
That, naturally, made the other laugh even harder, and Emma decided that Jennifer was clearly wonderful, because even back in the day, Aldis wouldn't have made her laugh  _quite_ so hard just for spurting alcohol out of her nose.  
  
A little while and a couple more drinks later - though Emma went to the bar to get the third round, as the Porn Stars that Jennifer had brought back on her second trip were possibly even  _more_  fruity and girly than even the Electric Popsicles had been - Emma crossed her arms on the table, hunching her shoulders as she leaned forward to consider the dance floor. There was a bit of a lull in the conversation, and Jennifer was leaning back in her seat to sip at the whiskey that Emma had retrieved for them, so she just sort of let her eyes wander over the dancing crowd, thoughtfully.  
  
"There are a lot more women than I had expected here," she said, mildly, picking up her glass to sip at the amber liquid, thoughtfully.  
  
"Maybe it's lady's night," Jennifer shrugged.  
  
She considered that for a long few moments, then said, finally, "Yeah, maybe, but I think it's a different kind of 'lady's night' than I usually go to."  
  
"Hm?" The other furrowed her brows at her, looking sort of confused.  
  
Emma waved her hand at the dance floor, as though trying to indicate all of it, and said, "Well, normally lady's night is like a feeding frenzy, men swarming everywhere to feed on the low hanging fruit... lots of drunk women all in one place, all the sleaze bags are willing to pay extra to get into the bar on those nights. But, ah... yes, these women are hanging out together, drunk, but a lot of them are making out with each other. I think this might be a lesbian ladies night."  
  
"...oh." Jennifer said, after a moment.  
  
Then, a moment later, "Do you want to go?"  
  
"What?" She glanced at the other woman, snorting at her furrowed brow, as though Jennifer was genuinely worried that Emma was somehow insulted that she had brought her to a gay bar. "No, of course not, don't be stupid. On the other hand... I sort of feel out of place, not dancing when everyone else is, so  _clearly_  we can't just be the only two women that came together to this bar that aren't dancing, come on."  
  
"Come on?" Jennifer repeated, blinking.  
  
"You. Me. We came together to a lesbian bar. Together. We ought to be  _dancing_  together, too. Come on." Emma wiggled her fingers at her, grinning, and slid off of her stool before she wiggled her hips. "Dance with me, Jennifer. Or are you chicken?"  
  
"I'm  _not_  chicken," she said, firmly, and took her hand, sliding off of her stool.   
  
Grinning, Emma tugged the other towards the dance floor again. Maybe it was stupid. Actually, she took that back, it wasn't  _maybe_  stupid, it was definitely stupid, but there she was, fingers curled with Jennifer's as she tugged her out onto the wooden floor, those brightly coloured lights washing over them as they moved, and she tugged her right out into the midst of the crowd, until it whirled and moved around them and they were consumed.

  
+++  
  


"Someone alert the papers, it's nine o'clock on a Saturday morning, and Emma Stone is _smiling_."  
  
"Shut it, Matthew," Emma said, blissfully, as she slipped past him into the back room, and started shedding her scarf, her backpack, her purse. "And for the record, I'm smiling, because just distantly, over the roaring of your massive ego, I can hear how awesome I am. It's hard, because your ego tends to drown out everything around it, but I can just faintly hear it...  _'Emma... you're awesome'_." She wiggled her fingers at him. "So suck it."  
  
He rolled his eyes, leaning in the door frame. It wasn't like any sane person would be walking into a cell phone store at 9 am on a Saturday morning. (Not, for the record, that this actually meant that they weren't always busy.) "Seriously, did you get laid last night?"  
  
"No," she snorted, kicking off her yellow rain boots and shoving her feet into a pair of black and white flats that always managed to remind her of tuxedos. "I didn't, in fact, I was just being sociable, you know, like people do on Friday nights. For the record, why am I working with you  _again_? Seriously, are we the only two people that work in this damn place?"  
  
"Yep," he smirked, as she breezed past him to go log into one of the computers. "Didn't you hear? I fired everyone else. We're hiring again. Say, that chick you were hanging out with last night, think she needs a job? Her ass was pretty damn fan-fucking-tastic."  
  
"Nope, she's got a job," Emma shrugged, leaning on the counter. "Pretty good one too, which I believe makes her ass un-tappable for you."  
  
"Why, what's she doing? I could totally compete."  
  
"With  _cell phones_? Yeah, guess again, geek boy. She makes a lot better money as a mechanic."  
  
"Mechanic." He stopped, arching a brow. "Wait,  _that_  was your mechanic? She of the coming to your house to get your car, of making you late with my coffee, leant your yellow umbrella to,  _that_  mechanic? You were going out drinking with  _that_  mechanic?"  
  
"As a matter of fact, yes." Emma puffed a breath upwards at her bangs, frowning when that sort of just managed to rustle them but not actually rearrange them into the neat line she was clearly trying to achieve with them.  
  
"...so... good in bed, then?"  
  
"I didn't  _sleep_  with her, you freak, we just went out for drinks," she swatted his shoulder, and puffed another breath at her bangs, grumbling when they still refused to settle properly. "Seriously, I am just going to shave my head. Do the butch look."  
  
"I don't know," Matthew cleared his throat, leaning beside her. "I'd say you're the femme one."  
  
"I'm the - you asshole." She sighed, dramatically, and rolled her eyes. "You know, not all of real life is like your animes. Two women have the ability to hang out together without one of them declaring their undying love for the other immediately, god, you are such a freak. Get your mind out of your hentai and into the real world, you got that, Gubler? There are _no_  tentacles lurking around the corner."  
  
He pouted. "Shame, that."  
  
"Freak," she declared, then glanced at the television that was installed in the blue shelving unit on the back wall of the store. "Why didn't you turn on the tv? We could be missing some terribly important music videos, or something."  
  
"God," he groaned, letting his head slump forward to land on the counter. "If I have to hear that new Nikki Minaj song  _one more time_ , I am going to commit  _hari kari_."  
  
"I'd pay to see that, actually," she snickered, and flicked on the tv.  
  
Only, even though it was the channel that they always had on at work, it wasn't just overly-processed pop music with music videos that didn't manage to make the slightest sense, like it usually was. Instead, there was a news cast playing, and based on the look of utter unbridled terror on the face of the reporter giving the story, it wasn't good news.  
  
"That doesn't sound much like Nikki Minaj," Matthew teased, from where he was still leaning on the counter, eyes on the mall and the people passing by, not on the television.  
  
"It's a special bulletin," Emma said, quietly, eyes riveted to the screen.  
  
"Special enough that they'd interrupt pop music, the strippers of the music industry? That seems hard to believe, what's the 'special bulletin' about, anyway?" He asked, leaning forward now, hopping up to see if he could see from where he stood, which really wasn't a good angle to be seeing anything at, much less the news interrupting their regular broadcasting to bring you a breaking news story.  
  
"Come here," she said, firmly.  
  
"One of us has got to watch the floor - " Matthew started.  
  
Eyes bright, Emma spun from the television to glower at her manager for a moment, then her gaze snapped right back to the television, hugging herself around the middle as she focused her eyes on what she didn't want to see - but she certainly couldn't look away from. " _Come. Here_."  
  
This time, Matthew wisely didn't argue with her, and stepped over to stand beside her, watching the screen.  
  
The reporter was clearly  _at_  the scene that she was reporting on, though not right directly in front of the action. It looked, from the camera angles, that the news crew had stationed themselves in an office building of some kind, based on the cubicles just visible around her, and were several stories up from the actual action itself. However, someone had their camera all but pressed up against the glass, and zoomed as much as the lens would allow them as they tried to capture the action in the courtyard below. It looked like it had maybe started out as a protest, Emma thought, at first, because there were riot cops there, shields held desperately at the ready, but she had never seen riot police in quite such a disarray before. They weren't in the neat lines that she normally saw them in, they seemed to just be all out for themselves, at that moment, full on whacking people with their shields or their clubs, or in one strange circumstance where a police officer was whacking at a man with a tree branch, whatever they could seem to get their hands on. Alarmingly, though, there seemed to be a few bodies laying still about the scene, and every one of them wore the distinctive police uniform that those struggling were still wearing.  
  
"No one knows what started the riot," the reporter was saying, her voice tremulous, as though she was about to burst into tears at any second. "When a group of civilians began attacking students as they attempted to pass to get to class, the police were called in, and they have been... attempting to restore order."  
  
"That doesn't look like an awful lot of order." Matthew said, quietly.  
  
The video feed was shaky, but it still showed the horrific facts of what was happening, startlingly clear. As they watched, a young woman that couldn't have been more than 100 pounds soaking wet grabbed the edges of one of the riot cop's shields, and despite the officer struggling to hold onto it, she ripped it clear out of his hands, throwing it aside. The officer swung at her with his billy club a handful of times, but that didn't seem to even slow her down.  
  
Even from here, they could see his head swivel side to side, trying to find some aid in the situation, looking for assistance, but the other officers seemed more than occupied, and with her arms reaching for him, the young woman moved even closer. Emma didn't have to see his face to know that he was panicked, to know that he hadn't been trained for this sort of situation. He threw his club at the girl, and she winced when it beaned off of her forehead, but the girl didn't even slow down, she just kept watching, fingers reaching hungrily towards the officer, fingers twitching as though she wanted to dig them right into him.   
  
"Shoot her! Shoot her!" Matthew shouted at the television.  
  
Emma didn't bother to correct him that the officer couldn't hear a word he was saying, from the other side of the screen, because leaning forward, she couldn't really blame the sentiment.  
  
As though he had heard Matthew - though of course he hadn't - the officer fumbled with his gun for a moment, backing up, then finally jerked it out of its holster, and at all but point blank range, fired straight at the attacking girl, who hadn't even faltered when she saw the gun.  
  
"Shots fired! Shots fired!" The reporter screamed.  
  
Blood spurted from the wounds, hitting the officer in the face like a blood rain, as he fired again and again.  
  
And the girl didn't even slow down.  
  
As though she had never been shot, as though there had been nothing more than flies hitting her, instead of bullets, she suddenly leapt at him, her knees striking the officer's hips, her hands his shoulders, and the force of her strike threw him backwards onto the ground, as she clung to his Kevlar vest and rode him down. Striking the ground hard, he dropped his gun, and in the crappy video they could see it skittering away, well out of his reach, then the girl -   
  
"Oh  _god_ ," Matthew retched, and staggered towards the back room and the bathroom.  
  
"This is - this is - " The reporter was clearly struggling to maintain her role as impartial relayer of events. She looked green, as though she was fighting the desire to do exactly what Matthew was doing in the bathroom, and her hand was shaking so hard that she nearly dropped the microphone several times. "This is a - a horrific scene, right now, it is safe to say that the police have lost - lost control of the situation, if they ever actually had it to begin with..."  
  
Through it all, the person with the camera hadn't moved it from the scene, whether he was shocked, out of morbid curiosity, or for journalistic integrity, Emma wasn't sure. But it was horrific, a bloody mess. Because when the girl had leapt on the police officer, knocking him down to the ground, she had... well, she had begun to  _eat him_. There was really no other way to describe what she was doing, she had bent to sink her teeth into his face, and when she had wrenched her head back, a chunk of his face had gone with her. Small blessings, Emma had to think, was that there was no sound, they were too far away from the scene itself to actually  _hear_  what was going on, but she could imagine it, in her mind, as the officer flailed and struggled to get free, even as the girl attacked him again and again and again, until finally he stopped struggling to get free, and fell limp, blood spreading in a slowly growing puddle under his head.  
  
In the corner of the screen, it was happening to other officers, too, Emma could see that other uniformed men and women were being beaten down to the ground, then torn apart - one literally, as two of the rioters seemed to be fighting over him, until one ripped off the man's arm, and hunkered down with his prize like a chipmunk with a nut, but still the camera focused, relentlessly, on the slight girl that had attacked the first officer.   
  
There was movement, finally, the cameraman jerking the focus away from that grizzly scene as others moved into the courtyard, several large dunne coloured vehicles arriving, and men in battle fatigues tumbling out.  
  
"They called in the army!" Emma called, hopefully loudly enough that Matthew would be able to hear her in the bathroom.   
  
"Did that make them stop fucking  _eating_  them?" He called back, slightly strangled sounding.  
  
She fell silent for a moment, watching, not quite able to believe what she was seeing. Silent for a long time, she finally, finally lifted her head to call, "No, it didn't."  
  
"Then I am  _staying here_."  
  
The army really  _was_  doing their best, they had to credit them for that, she thought, as she watched. They had pulled out the big guns - literally - and were firing on the rioters that had swiftly become like ravenous beasts. It seemed, however, to be about as effective as the police officer firing had been, as they didn't even seem to blink at being fired at, and kept eating, except for the few that had deemed their current meals not good enough - and those people were turning their attention to attacking the soldiers. It was horrific, really, she thought, that presumably these men and women had been battle hardened, taught how to fight against normal, human assailants, and they were probably pretty damn good at what they did. They were probably excellent at killing enemies. But the men and women that were attacking them, they were functioning properly, something had to be wrong with them, to make them act this way. No normal, healthy human would suddenly fly into a berserker rage and  _eat a police man's face_. That wasn't  _normal_ , that was like something out of a monster movie.  
  
"Oh god, oh god, oh god..." It was the reporter, the one with the mantra, her voice cracking on every third "god" or so, sometimes letting out a soft, half aborted sob. Emma couldn't blame her - it was horrific enough from here, and they weren't even  _in_  Kansas, with the killing and the blood.  
  
Matthew appeared in the door to the back room, looking pale and bloodless, though his eyes were now red-rimmed and wet. Looking sort of nauseous, he braced himself heavily in the door frame, and said, "Did the army manage to stop them?"  
  
Emma shook her head, soundlessly.  
  
"...did they  _eat_  the army?"  
  
She glanced at the screen, biting her lip, then nodded.  
  
"Oh." He said, and sat down, right there, very hard, ass on the floor, leaning on the door frame with a sort of shell-shocked, broken expression. "But.... they're the  _Army_."  
  
"They, ah...  _were_  the army," she corrected, quietly.  
  
The whimpering sound that Matthew made wasn't exactly flattering.  
  
"They need to try head shots," she said, frowning as she crossed her arms, as though hugging herself, again. "Take out their brains. Pretty hard for a body to function without a brain."  
  
"What," Matthew laughed, breathlessly, "Because they're zombies, or something?"  
  
"What else would you call that?!" Emma waved at the screen, at the carnage. The reporter had long since given up on trying to 'report' on the scene, or give any description of what was happening, and the little square in the corner of the screen that showed her camera showed her standing by the glass, staring at the destruction below, with her hand pressed over her mouth. No one seemed to know what to do, which wasn't really something that Emma could hold against them, because she was pretty sure that any normal human being in these circumstances would be just as lost. "Because I don't know about you, Matthew, but that looks an awful lot like  _zombies_  to me!"  
  
"That's impossible!" He wailed, curling into a ball, putting his hands literally over his head. "The dead can't walk!"  
  
"Maybe they're not  _dead_ , I don't know if there is such a thing as a dictionary definition of a _zombie_ , but I'm sorry, when I see people become abnormally strong, and attack  _and then eat_  people like the police and the military, that have been sent to stop them,  _especially_ after having been shot several times, then I think  _zombie_!"  
  
Matthew was looking very green again, so Emma gave up on reasoning with him, and instead, bolted for the phone. "I need to call my dad," she said, to no one in particular, because Matthew wasn't listening and there was no one else to hear, but she thought, maybe, it was to make herself feel a little better.   
  
Grabbing the phone on the desk, she dialed, hands shaking, the number that she still had memorized even if she literally could not recall the last time she had actually called it.  
  
It rang, and rang, and rang, with no answer, so maybe her dad was out back again, or he could have been checking his land. She had no doubt that if he were home, he would have answered, even if he  _hadn't_  known it was her, because he always answered the damn phone, no one ever called him. He still hadn't gotten an answering machine, either, so finally she set the receiver back in its cradle, frustrated.  _He_  would know what to do, under the circumstances.  
  
The scene on the television was even more dire, now that she'd turned her attention back. There were people littering the ground, a couple of them dressed just in normal clothes, and she wondered if those were civilian victims, or maybe some the rioters themselves, finally taken down by the nearly constant firing of the soldiers. Good god, it was like a  _war zone_ , in downtown fucking Lawrence, Kansas. The reporter was sobbing now, still at the window, hand still pressed over her mouth, just crying like a baby, absolutely falling apart.  
  
Emma wasn't sure she blamed her.  
  
Digging in her pocket for a moment, she tugged out her phone, and flicked through her contacts before her thumb found  _Jennifer Lawrence_ , and she dialed.  
  
"Hey, Jennifer?" She said, a moment later. "Are you at work?"  
  
A moment of silence, then:  
  
"Do you have a tv there?"

  
+++

 

There was no television in the garage itself, but there was one in the office, the waiting room sort of thing that they kept just in case someone wanted to sit and wait for their car to be fixed, and the boss had tossed up a television, once upon a time, claiming it was for them. She suspected that really, he just wanted to watch the tv himself, while he was sitting in the office, because though he had once been the mechanic that had started this whole thing, now he was past all of that, and he got to sit in the office while  _other_  mechanics did the work for him.

Good plan, if you asked her, but at the moment, her mind was on other things, as she sat on the counter that people normally did paperwork and handed the keys over, elbows resting on her thighs as she leaned forward, looking up at the television screen.

Tom was leaning on the counter beside her, his elbows up on the counter as he looked up at the screen.

It was horrific, what they were watching, the reporters trying to figure out what exactly was going on, and things just weren't getting better. It was getting worse and worse and worse, from what she could see, police trying to flood into that courtyard at the University in Lawrence, Kansas, trying to stop the rioters or whoever they were, but  _god_ , it was just getting worse, because these people didn't stop, they didn't slow down, they just kept going...

There was no work being done, not anywhere in the garage, none of the mechanics were working on anything, but Jennifer wasn't sure she could have forced herself to try to do any work if her life had depended on it, not at this moment. This was the worst thing she could remember seeing on television in her life, and  _she_  had seen some terrorist attacks. Those had been sort of distant, and horrific, sure, she remembered being back in school and curling up between her parents and absolutely bawling at all of the damage and terrible things that were happening to people on the television screen, but in the end, those had been stepped back. She didn't actually see a single person die, just knew that many of them had. This time, she wasn't sure if maybe the reporters just were too shocked to censor themselves, or what, but she was seeing the carnage. All of the carnage. It was a bloody, terrible mess, and people just kept dying. She had _watched_  people die, on the television.

The door of the garage opened, with a ringing of the bell, and Jennifer glanced up, smiling faintly.

It was Emma, darting into the garage with her scarf streaming behind her like a cape or something, darting closer to her, and leaned on the counter right beside Jennifer, breathing hard. If the mall that Emma worked at wasn't quite so far away, Jennifer would have thought that maybe she had run from work, but knowing her, she probably  _had_  run from the bus stop. Good thing she had finished fixing her car, and it was sitting out in the parking lot of the garage, waiting to be picked up. It wasn't perfect, but it had been fixed up a lot better than she had actually written it up on the invoice. Emma leaned on her leg, and Jennifer straightened slightly to just sort of cup the other's blond head for a moment, brushing her thumb over the top of her head, and said, quietly, "Hey. How are you doing?"

"Horrified," she muttered, leaning on her thigh, and closed her eyes. "What's the current state of the, ah, situation?"

"The President has declared a state of emergency," Tom said, and both of the women glanced at him. He was still leaning on the counter, and his attention was on the television, his face pale under the scruff of his almost beard. Needed a shave, because it was just scruff, not really a beard and not really just stubble. Somewhere in between. Give it enough time, and he'd probably look like a mountain man, or something. "We're under martial law."

"All of us?" Emma frowned, confused. "But I mean... Oregon isn't really  _in_  Kansas, why not just put the state of emergency on Kansas?"

Tom glanced at her, at that, frowning. "...when's the last time you saw the television?"

"...I dunno, when I left work. I've been stuck on the bus, what time is it?"

Jennifer glanced at the clock on the wall. "About four thirty. Things have changed, Emma."

"...for the better?" She asked, hopefully.

"No," she shook her head, and nodded at the television screen, then grabbed the remote, and started flicking through the channels.

Every single channel was news. There weren't even cartoons on the networks that were usually cartoons 24/7, it was literally just news, news, news. There were reporters on every channel, some panicked, some calm, but every one of them was detailing attacks that were happening - and as they watched, Jennifer could feel Emma start to tremble harder and harder against her leg.

Because they weren't all taking place in a courtyard of the University of Kansas.

There were attacks in Manila, attacks in Brazil, attacks in Ottawa, attacks in Miami, there was cell phone footage of an attack in Moscow, another in London, there were panicked sounding phone calls coming in from a 911 operator in Sydney...

"What is going on?" She breathed, eyes wide.

"The world is burning," Tom said, quietly, still leaning on the counter, shaking his head.

Emma was still trembling as she leaned on Jennifer's thigh, her fingers curling over her leg, and Jennifer just kept brushing her thumb over the other's hair, gently, knowing exactly what she felt like. It was like a hug, without an actual hug, because they were close at least, drawing on the comfort of another human being.

"It's not possible this is like... viral advertising or something, is it?" Emma asked, and her voice was slightly tremulous. "For a zombie movie, someone's sick idea of a joke?"

Jennifer took a deep breath, and shook her head. "I don't think so."

"...it was worth a shot," she murmured.

They sat in silence for a long few minutes, watching the screen. The office was cold and quiet, even though the three of them stood there together, watching, and none of them intended to move, even if someone had walked into the office and demanded to have their car fixed. As far as they could tell, the whole world had stopped, and was watching their own screens, the news, with baited breath.

"What do we do?" Tom said, suddenly, waving at the screen. "I mean, what do we do?"

"Well, there's nothing happening  _here_ ," Jennifer pointed out.

"But at this rate, something might," Emma murmured, quietly, biting her lip. "I mean, what if someone suddenly goes crazy here?"

"My question is,  _why_  are they suddenly going crazy?" Jennifer asked, frowning slightly, shifting her hand so that she could finally slide it right into Emma's hair, carding her fingers through the blond locks. Emma sighed, softly, and leaned over again, relaxing against her. "I mean, the reporters have said something about it being PCP, drugs and stuff, but... god. How are there people the whole world over suddenly all taking the same type of PCP and attacking each other in groups? That doesn't make sense."

"No," Tom agreed, frowning. "It doesn't."

"But I mean... how is it spreading, then? I mean, it's all over the place, it's on every continent!" Emma protested, waving at the screen, though she was still staying curled close to Jennifer.

"Think it could be a disease?" Jennifer asked, softly.

"Disease?" Tom glanced back at her, frowning slightly, scratching his jaw. "...but it's still spreading like crazy..."

"Remember SARs?" Emma looked up at him, shrugging. "Could be like SARs."

"Or H1N1," Jennifer agreed. "Or AIDs, or any of a thousand different diseases that they've managed to spread in many different places, all because someone that got sick decided to take their trip to some other country, anyway, because 'oh well, they're not that sick' or 'I'd rather get better at my own house than in a foreign country' and meanwhile they should have been staying in a  _hospital_  in the country they've just left, but they're not thinking that way. I mean, suppose this is a disease. Maybe you can, I dunno, get it through sneezing. Well, suppose you've got some businessman, and he's got a cold. He walks onto a plan, sneezing the whole way, and spreads the infection through the whole thing. Suppose now you've got... I dunno, ten other people on the plane are now infected. They're all sick, now. Now this flight is going from New York to England. Five of the people that are infected stay in England, because that's where they're either from or where they were going. They start spreading the infection in England, then the other five get on other flights because this was just their connecting flight. One goes to France, one goes to Germany, one goes to Russia, one goes on to Africa, and one goes, I dunno, back to the States, cause they were the pilot or something. Now you've got five people in different countries infected, aside from the original patient zero. Now that pilot that got sick, he thinks he's just got the sniffles, but he's fine, so he hops on another plane, and this time he's flying over to South America, and the next time he's off to Australia, and then he's off to Japan the next day, then to China next, and everywhere he goes, he's sneezing, and a few of the patients are getting sick, and...." She waved at the screen. "I mean, look at this. All the attacks are happening in major cities, so far, right?"

"Well, I don't know if I'd consider Lawrence  _major_ ," Emma murmured. "But I see the point."

"Right.  _Fairly_  major cities. The kind that are definitely likely to be having tourists or travelers coming in, the sort of place where people tend to get come in and start spreading disease, if they've got it. So maybe it's an infection."

"...that makes a lot of sense," Tom muttered, though the look on his face seemed to say that he didn't like the fact that this  _did_  make sense.

"Is no one else gonna say it? Am I gonna have to be the one that says it?" Emma said, suddenly, slapping her hand down on the counter, and making the others look at her, startled. "Fine! I'll be the geeky one, I'll be the one that jumps to the conclusion that no one else wants to get to! It's a fucking  _zombie_   _apocalypse_! They're zombies! They're killing people and eating people and it's  _zombies_! There. I said it. I mean it, I really believe that, and nothing either of you can say is going to convince me otherwise. They're zombies, and somehow the zombie apocalypse has begun."

Tom laughed, an almost hysterical sounding sound, actually, and said, "Don't you think that's a little... bold of a declaration to be making?"

"I don't know," Jennifer shook her head. "I've seen the Walking Dead, that sort of does sound like a zombie apocalypse..."

"The face eater in Miami!" Emma said, suddenly, eyes wide. "The guy that ate the guy's face in Miami last week! Zombie!"

"I thought he was on Bath Salts." Jennifer glanced at her, frowning.

"And they said that they were on PCP!" She waved at the screen, again, starting to tremble again.

"I mean, don't zombies have to be dead?" Jennifer asked, again, running her fingers through the blond hair still leaning on her leg.   
  
"No, not necessarily. I mean, there are a lot of different ideas of what makes a zombie, and technically, in the original dictionary definition of what a zombie is, it's someone that has been put into a trance like spell by a Hoodoo witch. I mean, technically, the idea of them being dead came from the idea that they would burst out of the grave, which they  _would_ , because the ingredients that they would use to put them into the trance, using puffer fish poison heavily, put the people in to a trance like state that lowered their breathing and heart beat to the point that they would  _appear_  to be dead, to someone that wasn't a doctor, so they would get buried, then when they 'woke up' later, they'd freak out, and burst out of the grave, and then they'd be the Hoodoo witch's slave. So they weren't really dead, although everyone  _thought_  they were dead, so that's where the idea of zombies being completely dead came from, that they were the, you know, 'walking dead'. Of course," By this point, Emma was really starting to get animated about this, waving her hand in the air as she tried to prove her point. "Now, naturally, Hollywood has readily reinforced the idea that zombies are  _undead_  because it tends to make things much less unsettling for those watching the zombie movies, but - "  
  
"Okay, okay, girl genius, I think we got the idea," Tom scoffed, but he was looking at her with a sort of admiration in his eyes.  
  
Jennifer frowned, holding her a little closer, and looked up at the screen. "So, suppose you're right, Emma. Suppose they're not really dead. What then, makes a perfectly normal healthy person turn into a ravenous flesh eating monster that doesn't even get slowed down by being shot?"  
  
Emma frowned, biting her lip, and looked up at her. "I don't know."  
  
"You're the one that knows about the whats, not the hows, huh?" She grinned at her.  
  
She shrugged. "I'm an English major. You do the biology."  
  
"Yeah, but okay. Suppose it  _is_  a disease. And it's spreading. What then?" Tom pointed out.  
  
"Zombie survival plan."  
  
They both turned to look at Emma, and Jennifer arched her brow. "Zombie survival plan."  
  
"Yeah! Come on, don't tell me you haven't at least  _heard_  of those," she rolled her eyes. "Everyone knows about them, it's a list of steps and plans and things to get and stuff that you set up beforehand, just in case of the zombie apocalypse, and then you know what you're going to do, and you're not caught off guard. To be honest, I have several different zombie survival plans, for different kind of zombies. The runners that move faster than average people, and the ones for the actual shuffling dead that are rotting on their bones, and ones for the kind like they have in Resident Evil that are super smart and more powerful than just a regular old zombie would be, and then you've got the ones from Silent Hill that are like... monsters that look like humans, and... you all think I'm insane." She trailed off. "Wow, I sound like some kind of freak..."  
  
"Actually," Jennifer said in honest admiration, stroking the other woman's hair again, "I'm impressed."  
  
"So am I, actually, which sort of terrifies me to be saying." Tom straightened, pushing off the counter, and turned to face Emma properly. "What do we need?"  
  
"For... what?" She blinked at him.  
  
"For this zombie survival plan of yours. If it's actually happening, then we better get our asses in gear and figure out what to do  _before_  they come and try to eat our faces. What do we need?"  
  
Emma looked up at Tom, then up at Jennifer, blinking. "...really?"  
  
Jennifer smiled at her, trying to look encouraging. "Really. Let's figure out what we need to do to kick some zombie ass, huh?"

  
+++

  
_((This page appears to be written on what is clearly an automotive garage receipt, scrawled over all the information that would normally be put in about make, model, and work to be performed.))_

Stuff we need:

-weapons!

-water

-food... we need to bring some cans or dried food or something

-blankets

-car

-gas!

-flashlights

-batteries

-wind up radio

 

If they hit Portland, meet at the garage, that's where we'll keep the bulk of the stuff, can get lots of gas there. If the garage is compromised and we need to go somewhere else, meet at the mall that Emma works at because we can retrieve things. At that point we can probably loot if we have to. (Sorry, but it's true!)

 

TEXT THE OTHERS. If we don't get a message from you, we have to assume that you've been infected/eaten! Text "SOS" if you see zombies or if we have to put the zombie plan into effect.

 

THEN GET THE HELL OUT OF PORTLAND.

 

Places to go:

-Washington

-Massachusetts

-Nevada

 

 

 

"C'mon in," Emma said, quietly, holding the front door open, behind her.

Jennifer slipped in behind her, quietly, and tugged off her jacket, hanging it up on the hooks that lined the little 'mudroom' just off of the front porch. Kicking off her boots, she shoved her hands in her pockets, and waited for Emma to make the next move.

"All right, well... call it ever so humble... welcome to my home," Emma smiled at her, and lead the way into her house.

It wasn't a big house, and it was pretty quiet, but it was, as she had said, home. She and her mother had moved into this house when she was thirteen, when Emma was still old enough to think that she knew absolutely everything, and still too young to know that being an adult meant feeling like you never knew anything. She could remember it, clearly, when it was new and there were still boxes of everything they owned stacked along the walls, when her mother would walk through the hallways in her fluffy pink bathrobe, sipping at a cup of tea, and look out the windows, and sigh wistfully. Emma remembered the day that she had moved out of this house, then the day that she had moved back in, three years later, in the middle of the night with just a suitcase and her backpack, standing in the empty, dusty hallways that had once contained herself and her mother and Aldis, coming in and acting as though he owned the place, and now just had her, small and alone. She'd slept in the mud room, the rest of that night, because she just couldn't bring herself to get into the house proper.

But now it was just her home. It still carried some of the holdover from when it had been her mothers, her mother's hideous pink floral couch was still in the living room, covered by the afghan that her grandmother had crocheted some eons ago, and there was always a vase of daisies on the kitchen table, though Emma kept fake ones, because they were just a lot easier to keep. Though they  _did_  have to be dusted.

Tossing her purse down on the kitchen table, she headed to the cupboard to look for something to eat, and called, over her shoulder, "You have any preferences for dinner?"

"At the moment, as long as it's not human flesh, I'm probably all right with it," Jennifer admitted, stepping awkwardly into the kitchen, her thumbs hooked in her pockets.

"Well, then you're in luck, because I happen to be right out of human flesh," Emma said, lightly, trying to keep the conversation easy, trying to keep them both from focusing on the fact that, out there, in several places around this country and others, people apparently  _were_  eating human flesh. "I  _do_  have tuna and tuna helper though, how's that sound to you?"

"Sounds great," she said, and ran her hand through her hair. "Do you need some help?"

"At the moment," Emma said, honestly, turning to look at her. "The only help I need is company. I don't want to be alone."

"I can't really blame you," Jennifer admitted, and moved properly into the room so that she could swing one of the chairs out from the table, and sit down, so that she could watch Emma work. It was the reason why she had sort of casually suggested that maybe neither of them should go home tonight, because frankly she didn't want to be alone either. She wasn't sure, under the circumstances, that she could really handle facing her apartment alone without a single person to break the sound.

Emma let out a long breath, then started getting the things together to start cooking. "C'mon," she said, as she poured milk into the measuring cup. "Talk to me. I can't handle the silence. I don't want to start screaming to fill it up."

Jennifer snorted. "You could sing?"

"Oh god no, you don't want to hear me sing," she grinned at her, already starting to look a little more calm, though Jennifer could see that the measuring cup that she was holding was trembling just finely, as though her hand couldn't keep quite still. "I'm liable to break your ear drums, and with broken ear drums, you wouldn't hear the zombies coming. No good. So let's focus on something else, shall we?"

"All right, deal." She shook her head. "Nice house. This is yours, right?"

"Yeah," Emma poured the milk, then rested her hands on the edge of the countertop for a moment, considering what to say next. She could just pass it off as nothing, it would be easy to just breeze it off and leave it at that. But Jennifer... she'd known her, what, a week now? But she wasn't just some stranger that she'd only talked to a few times. It was funny, she had read once that catastrophe solidifies relationships, makes those that mildly dislike each other into enemies, and make those that are friendly into dear friends. Maybe this zombie apocalypse was their catastrophe, and it was making Jennifer, a person that she barely knew but felt fond towards, into someone that she trusted completely and really felt like she could depend on. Taking a deep breath, she twisted to face Jennifer finally, and said, "I inherited it, when I was nineteen. From my mother."

"Oh." The other woman said, leaning back slightly in her seat, eyes widening in realization. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay." Emma smiled faintly, then laughed despite herself. "Well, no, it's not okay, I miss her like crazy, but... it was nine years ago, it's not like I haven't had time to get used to the idea that she's... she's never gonna come down in those stupid rabbit slippers and make her tea, like she used to."

"I really am sorry, though," Jennifer said, quietly, and Emma could see in her eyes that the other really did mean that.

"The thing is..." She turned so that she could start adding the sauce packet to the milk and butter and water. It wasn't that she didn't want to look at Jennifer, but it was a lot easier to  _say_  when she didn't have to meet anyone's eyes and see genuine sympathy looking back at her. "It wasn't a surprise. We knew it was coming, she got sick when I was sixteen. Cancer. Inoperable brain cancer. For the first couple years, they hit her with every chemo and radiation treatment under the sun, they had her trying all this experimental shit, she even tried a few left wing new age treatments, you know, the ridiculous ones that sound like someone was drunk when they invented them? I dunno, it... she tried. Everything. And for a while, the doctors were saying that they thought it was working, the tumour didn't seem to be spreading any, it seemed to be maybe going into remission... but they were wrong, and eventually it came back with a vengeance, and they told her that now it was just a matter of making her comfortable. Well... my mom was a bit of a spit fire. Refused to just...  _be comfortable_ , so when I was eighteen, she decided to do everything that she'd never had a chance to do."

Emma nodded at the wall beside the refrigerator, directing Jennifer's attention to the wall of photos that were there. Most people didn't really pay them much attention until they were pointed out to them, because they just thought they were family photos, or something.

"Those are the pictures we took. We went to see the Grand Canyon, went to see the Eiffel tower... she ripped through every penny of her retirement fund, because as she said, it wasn't like she was going to get a  _chance_  to retire, anyway, so she might as well use it on all the living she'd never managed to have." Emma took a deep breath. "And she sent me to school. Said that she was going to pay for my tuition, that she refused to let me take the year off just because she was sick, said I wasn't allowed to delay my future because  _she_  didn't have one. I fought her on it. Tried to tell her that she was more important than my fucking schooling, but... told you. She was a spitfire."

"Sounds like she took the news the way she wanted to," Jennifer said, softly.

"Yeah, she was that kinda woman." Emma agreed, adding the noodles and the tuna to the now-boiling pan. "The only thing  _I_  wanted for her didn't happen, though."

"For her to get better?" She asked, a little awkwardly.

"Hm? No, I knew that wasn't going to happen, no point wishing for the impossible, anyway, we all know it can't happen. No... I wanted her to talk to my dad, one last time, maybe... figure out what had happened with them. I knew she still loved him." Emma pressed her lips into a thin, fine line, then shook her head, and stirred their slowly cooking dinner, now. "He never came. And she never went to him. He did come to her funeral, though, showed up in this... tacking looking brown suit that probably went out of style twenty years ago, ridiculous, and... he didn't cry. I don't know what I'd expected. I mean, they'd been divorced for six years, it wasn't like he even owed her to come, but... I got so mad. That he would come when she was _dead_ , but that he wouldn't come when she was  _alive_? I just..."

"I'm sorry," Jennifer whispered again, and Emma felt her arms slip around her waist from behind, hugging her and curling over her shoulders like a blanket, and when had Emma started crying? She wiped at her face, quickly, as though trying to hide the tears, but it was no use, they were still flowing, faster than she could prevent them, so she gave up, and leaned back into Jennifer's chest, shoulders shaking as she let the other hold her like no one had since Aldis and her mother before him, and sobbed.

 

+++

 

"So... slightly over-mushy tuna helper... and whiskey. Because I don't have any girly drink mix stuff things in my house," Emma said, cheerfully, offering Jennifer a glass and a plate, then darting back into the kitchen to get her own.

Shaking her head, Jennifer crossed her ankles, and leaned back into the couch - which  _was_  hideously flowered but really quite comfortable, and started poking at the noodles with her fork. "Not a problem, it's still better than whatever I might have been eating, if I had gone home tonight."

"Oh yeah?" Emma flopped down beside her, and tucked her legs up underneath her. "What would you have had, then?"

"Cold leftover Chinese, probably?" She shrugged, and took a bite of the noodles.

"...yeah, that sounds utterly revolting," she agreed, crinkling her nose, then jerked her head in the direction of the television. "Think we ought to keep up on the world situation, or should we try to pretend that the zombies aren't coming until at least _after_  we've finished eating us some dinner?"

"Well, as much as I like the idea of keeping my appetite healthy and untainted by zombies... if they showed up in Portland during dinner, and we didn't notice because of our stomachs, I'd be somewhat pissed with myself," she pointed out, and leaned forward to grab the remote off of the coffee table in front of them. "So news I think it has to be, right?"

"Good point," Emma nodded, and leaned back in the couch. "Channel surf away."

Jennifer nodded, and flicked the television on, then began scrolling through the channels. It wasn't hard to find one with a news update on the current situation, every single channel seemed to have been taken over by news reports of the attacks that were not only still going on worldwide, but increasing in frequency and severity, more and more people joining in the longer the hours went on. Some of the channels actually had their own staff giving reports, and clearly not all of them were trained newscasters, but rather trained cameramen and effects people. Other channels were just streaming the reports from the major news broadcasters - CNN was on at least four times as many channels at it normally was. Jennifer wasn't sure if that was normal, or even allowed, but considering the circumstances, who was going to stop them?  
  
A few of the channels said "We are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by." and she couldn't really blame them, either. As much as everyone had probably seen at one zombie movie in their life, and there were things like people joking about Zombie Survival Plans and zombie walks in major cities, no one was  _actually_  prepared for this to happen. No one had ever really thought that it  _would_  happen.  
  
Finally, she settled on one of the CNN clone channels, no idea what the channel usually was, but at least it was giving them bits and pieces from all over the world, instead of focusing in on just one location.  
It really  _had_  gotten a lot worse. At nine o'clock that morning, there had been one major outbreak in the centre of America. Now, there had been attacks on every continent, and police were scrambling to not only identify the dead - because there were a lot of those, now, found dead, and trying to figure out who the attackers themselves were -  but to contain the attacks. Apparently some private citizens had recognized people they knew, from the footage of the attacks, and there were now federal agencies trying to piece together a pattern.  
  
"So far, the only trend that they have been able to identify is that about a third of those that are now identified among the attackers had travelled overseas or cross country in the last two weeks." The reporter was saying. "They are not saying whether this is the  _cause_  of the attacks, but this trend has appeared."  
  
Emma, from where she sat on the other end of the couch, said, quietly, "You haven't travelled overseas or across country in the last two weeks, have you?"  
  
"Four weeks ago."  
  
She could almost  _feel_  the other stiffen on the other side of the couch, and Emma looked at her sharply. "You don't feel like eating people's faces, do you?"  
  
"No," Jennifer shook her head, picking at her own noodles. Frankly, she didn't even want to eat her dinner. "And besides, if the other trend is that they had gone overseas, don't you think it's more likely that they're looking at people who have  _flown_  in the last two weeks, not just people who got in their car and drove until the fan belt blew?"  
  
"...probably," she admitted, slumping back against the pillows.  
  
"It's okay," Jennifer reached over and squeezed the other's knee. "Under the circumstances, I'd probably be freaked out, too. I mean... look at what's going on, the world is falling apart, it's..."  
  
"I don't want to look at it," Emma said, suddenly, bolting forward to snatch the remote from where Jennifer had left it.  
  
As she watched her, surprised, Emma flicked through the channels, muttering to herself as she did. "Music television... fuck, news. Home and Gardens... technical difficulties, come on, how hard is it to play pre-recorded tv shows... Teletoon Retro... oh come on!" Emma waved at the television with the remote, eyes wide. "They interrupted the He-Man marathon just to play CNN?! I don't want to  _watch_  CNN, I don't want to see how the world is falling apart, I don't  _want_  to see that people are getting eaten!"  
  
"But if they come to Portland...?" Jennifer started.  
  
"Then let them come to Portland! Let them come in my house and eat us up! I'd rather be eaten alive than have to try and watch - watch  _this_  while I'm trying to eat!"   
  
Jennifer knew a panic attack when she saw one. She'd seen them before, when she'd still been back in Massachusetts, before her best friend decided that he'd found his soul mate on the internet and decided to bolt clear across the country, leaving her there alone. Jesse was a sweet guy, and she'd known him since they were toddlers in diapers together, but he was always terribly anxious, sometimes socially awkward, and when something happened that triggered his anxiety, he would go into panic attacks, gasping, talking rapidly, eyes wide. She had learned, a long time ago, to help him through them - she'd had to. He was her best friend. She wasn't going to leave him to suffer alone.  
  
Dropping her plate on the coffee table, Jennifer shifted to tug Emma in tight against her chest, burying the other girl's face in her shoulder, so that Emma didn't have to see the television, and whispered, "You need to breathe, Emma, or you're going to trigger an asthma attack."  
  
"I don't have - have asthma," Emma gasped, though she didn't fight the hug.  
  
"Anyone can get them," she lied, stroking her hair. "They can be triggered by stress. You don't want stress induced asthma, do you? Come on, breathe, deep breaths, in through your nose, out through your mouth..."  
  
The other drew in a long, shaky breath, then finally started to relax against her.  
  
They sat together for a long moment, Jennifer continuing to stroke the other's hair, rubbing her back, trying to get her to focus on something other than the panic and the pain, focusing her own breathing to be as slow and steady and even as possible, so that Emma had something to focus on. She wasn't sure how long, exactly, they sat there like that, Jennifer watching the news still over the top of the other's head, watching as they showed the devastation that was happening in other countries, other places, fortunately still removed from them, and where they were, but it was going to have to be long enough. She would have waited for years, if she had needed to. They stayed still and quiet like that, until her breathing sounded normal again, and a less jittery Emma murmured, "There's no such thing as stress-induced asthma, is there?"  
  
"Sure there is," Jennifer said, stroking her hair. "But it's not spontaneous, and not everyone can get it. Only people with stress-induced asthma can get stress-induced asthma attacks."  
  
"Sorta what I thought." She murmured, then shifted slightly, lifting her head so that she could look up at Jennifer. "I'm sorry I did that, I don't usually... I mean, you've seen  _this_  and you've seen me cry, and god, I must seem like an emotional  _wreck_..."  
  
"All things considered, I think we can all agree that this is  _not_  your fault." Jennifer grinned at her. "There's a goddamn zombie apocalypse going on. If you were perfectly emotionally stable and fine with all of that going on, quite frankly, I think I'd be freaked out about your complete lack of freaking out."  
  
"...you're not freaking out." Emma said, arching a brow.  
  
"I'm freaking out on the inside," she shrugged, brushing the other's hair out of her face. Apparently surprise attacks were good for messing that up. "But I've sort of gotten used to, you know, over the years, being the person that's not allowed to freak out because everyone else is freaking out, and someone has to be there to sit back, and take care of them. So, I mean, not that I'm saying you can't take care of yourself, or anything, but I've seen a few minor crises in my life, and I've sort of gotten used to dealing with them. I just figure this is every minor crises I've dealt with before times about eight million, and... well, there you go. We all have different strengths, right?"  
  
"Yeah, well, apparently  _my_  strengths do  _not_  lie in not freaking the fuck out." Emma sighed, and leaned forward, resting her head on Jennifer's shoulder again, but while facing the television, this time. "I still don't want to watch this."  
  
"Well, if it's triggering, it's triggering." She grabbed for the remote.  
  
"No, no, see... I don't  _want_  to watch this, but I  _need_  to watch this." She closed her hand around Jennifer's, shaking her head, quietly. "We all have our own kind of strengths, you said it. I may not be good at not freaking out, but I'm  _really_  good at figuring out what to do after the freaking out is over, okay? So... trust me, I got this, but... I may just need you to... calm me down again, if I get too worked up."  
  
"Done," she said, with a soft laugh, "But it doesn't sound terribly healthy to throw yourself into a situation that you  _know_  is going to trigger you."  
  
"Yeah, but I  _have_  to do it. It's not like this is fiction anymore, it's not just something that I wrote, because I was bored and wanted to create something. This is real. This is life. I have spent the last... the last fifteen years in a fantasy world, Jennifer, lost in my books and my writing and in pretending that the world is a nice and good place. I have been trying to see the good in everyone, and believe that those around us really have our best intentions at heart. But I should have known better, really, things  _aren't_  getting better. Look at this!" She waved at the screen. "People are now  _literally_  eating each other to get ahead. This is not a good world."  
  
"I think this  _might_  be a slightly exaggerated example of what is normal..." She said, warily.  
  
"Yeah, maybe, but..." Emma took a deep, shuddery breath again.   
  
"But?" She prompted.  
  
"But I've been wasting my time on 'wanting to publish a novel', and I should have been focusing on the things that really mattered, you know? I'm twenty eight, I have a shitty job, and I'm about to face what very well be the end of the world, alone."  
  
"Hey." Jennifer said, firmly, slipping her hands up to cup Emma's jaw, brushing her thumbs over the apples of her cheeks, forcing the other to meet her eyes. Looking into those terrified blue eyes, she smiled, trying to make it a little better. "Look at me, okay? You are _not_  facing the end of the world alone. You're facing it with me. I'm not going to leave you."  
  
Emma looked back at her, emotions warring in those same blue eyes, and when Emma shifted, moving, Jennifer dropped her hands, letting her. She wasn't going to keep her still, she wasn't going to force her to try and accept her help, she wasn't going to stop -   
  
She wasn't going to stop the way that Emma slipped her arms around her neck, burying her fingers in Jennifer's long, dark brown hair, or the way that she pressed slightly trembling lips against hers.  
  
Jennifer sighed softly into the gentle, somewhat fumbling, closed lip kiss, slipping her arms gently around Emma's waist. She didn't want to scare her off, didn't want to make her bolt away from trying for too much. This was important in a way that hadn't actually occurred to her even moments before, but it  _was_ , and to her relief, Emma  _didn't_  bolt away, didn't try to apologize and back away. Instead, Emma shifted a little closer, until she was very nearly in Jennifer's lap, and parted her lips, moving them with growing confidence against Jennifer's. Maybe it was because she hadn't pushed her away - which Jennifer would certainly not do, not now, not to  _her_  - but Emma certainly seemed to be growing in confidence, fingers curling in her hair, fingernails scraping against her scalp as Emma pressed closer.  
  
"Emma?" She breathed, when the other seemed to show no signs of being about to pull away or panic again. "Are you sure you - ?"  
  
"Shh," she murmured back, in into Jennifer's lips, sliding closer again, until she had to break the kiss just long enough to clamber into her lap, straddling the darker haired girl's thighs as she did, then dipped her head back down, and pressed her lips to hers again. "Right now, I don't want to  _talk_."  
  
Well. Emma certainly seemed to know what, exactly, she was doing.  
  
Jennifer pressed her palms to the other's lower back, helping to shift her forward even further so that she could lean back on the arm of the couch, taking the blonde with her, and looked up at her when the kiss broke again, for that moment. Smiling up at her, to take the sting from the words, Jennifer said, "I just really don't want you to regret this. I don't want you to look back on this moment and think that it only happened because the world was ending."  
  
"Shut up, because the world is ending is a perfectly good reason," Emma shot back, but the corner of her mouth was still quirked up in a mischievous little smile,  and it was still Emma that leaned forward, kissing Jennifer again, softly, before murmuring, "I won't regret it, Jennifer, but please, for a moment... I just want to feel  _alive_."  
  
She understood that need. Frankly, she felt it herself. To feel the blood rushing through her veins, to feel her heart pounding, to know that no matter what, she was still alive and powerful and capable of so much more than just lying back and facing her death coming to her.  
  
So Jennifer pressed upwards, and kissed Emma again, pushing all the fervor she'd been afraid to use before into it.

  
+++

  
"New York's been hit." Jennifer murmured, quietly.  
  
Emma lifted her head, blinking slightly. "Hm?"  
  
Darkness had finally completely fallen, since they had gotten here, and the living room was lit only by the flicker of the television, all blues and whites, casting strange flickering shadows on the walls that tricked the eye and made you think of movement. Though the street lights were on outside, they didn't seem to reach into this room, so it was just that blue glow. Emma lay on top of Jennifer, which she had offered to move off of at least a half dozen times, until finally the other had said, firmly, that she  _wasn't_  heavy, and she  _liked_  her there, so please stop offering, and she had sort of contentedly snuggled in where she was, half on top of the other woman and half crunched into the space against the back of the couch, her great-grandmother's afghan spread over them both.   
  
"New York." Jennifer motioned at the television screen. "Big attack, apparently Wall Street was shut down, and Times Square was ravaged."   
  
"Ouch," she murmured, shifting slightly so that she could rub her eyes. Maybe she had fallen asleep, though she didn't really remember passing out. She could remember what was probably going to go down in her personal history as the greatest make out session of her life, but they had eventually just curled up on the couch with the blanket and the television, and well... yeah, maybe she  _had_  fallen asleep. Hard to tell, after the fact.   
  
"Lot more zombies there, than there is anywhere else," Jennifer murmured, and Emma realized that she was still lightly stroking her back, and leaned into the touch a little. "Which makes sense, New York is a whole lot bigger, but... what I'm not seeing is how this is spreading. It doesn't seem to have rhyme or reason, and it's not in any order I'd expect..."  
  
"Incubation period."  
  
"What?" Jennifer glanced up at her.  
  
Emma yawned, pressing her hand over her mouth, then shook herself a little, trying to wake herself up, and said, again, "Incubation period. A lot of people think that if you get bit by a zombie, you're instantly a zombie. I don't know where they got  _that_  idea from, because even in the movies, usually if someone gets bitten, there's an incubation period before the infection actually takes hold. Time for them to get  _sick_ , you see, because it's not just a human thing that can happen, zombies, there has to be a  _cause_."  
  
"So if the cause is an infection..." Jennifer murmured.  
  
"People have to have the  _time_  to get sick," she nodded, reaching up to curl a lock of Jennifer's dark hair around her finger. 'That's how SARs spread, right? There was some business man that was in China, and though chickens and monkeys had started getting sick, people weren't really getting sick yet. So he visits China, gets infected but doesn't know it because of the incubation period, and comes back to the states. Meanwhile, suddenly people get sick in  _waves_  over in China, hundreds of cases suddenly being identified in the span of just days, because no one had known they were really that sick, and they were spreading the still-contagious virus to everyone. Well, dude that got sick and doesn't know it yet gets back to the states, starts to feel like crap, and suddenly that 'little cold' he thought he had picked up because of travelling so much has turned into full blown SARs. Only thing is, by  _then_ , he's already spread it to dozens of other people, and  _they_ have spread it to dozens of other people, until it turned into a fucking  _pandemic_ , all because they didn't really know they were sick yet, but they were  _incubating_  it, and they were spreading it all along."  
  
Jennifer whistled, lowly. "So you could have had a single case come into the states, and if that person bumped into a lot of people..."  
  
"Uh huh." She nodded. "Now imagine that he happens to be a business man, or something, and he travels a lot for work, and he manages to cough on people in the cabin of ten different planes, then he sleeps with a hooker in Thailand and his girlfriend back in the states and maybe a mistress in France..."  
  
"Our hypothetical business man is quite the sexual tourist," Jennifer smirked.  
  
"So he is," she agreed, grinning. "And then, while in Sydney on business, he gets really drunk and sleeps with this really hot guy in the bar that reminds him of the Crocodile Hunter because, well, why not, he's in Australia, and everything know everything is 'down under' down under, so..."  
  
Jennifer was laughing, which was sort of gratifying. That was a lot of the reason why Emma wanted to write - she wanted to entertain, she wanted to tell stories to make people happy.   
  
"Either way, think about it this way." Emma said, brushing her fingers through Jennifer's hair, smiling softly. "He's 'met' a lot of people, and in all likelihood, infected them all. They then go sleep with other people, or go to a coffee shop and the coffee shop doesn't wash their mug all that well, and they go to a potluck and there's a teeny bit of double dipping that no one really notices and maybe they're in a car wreck and they're bleeding and those that try to pull them out of the car have open wounds on their hands from catching their hands on the glass, and... well, maybe some of those things are far fetched. But don't you see? There are thousands of ways that infection can be spread, and if it's a virus that's still contagious even when the person hasn't yet felt the symptoms..."  
  
"Then we could both be infected, right now, and not even know it yet." Jennifer said, brows furrowed.  
  
"Me?" Emma scoffed, and lightly smacked her shoulder. " _You're_  the one that travelled cross country, young lady."  
  
"Ah, but if I had it, you've got it too," she grinned. "Miss 'let's see how far I can stick my tongue down Jennifer's throat'."  
  
Emma scoffed, and lifted her chin. "You deserved it."  
  
Jennifer laughed again.  
  
Grinning slightly, Emma lay back down again, resting her head on the other's collarbone, eyes half lidded as she relaxed, not wanting to think about the zombies, not wanting to think about the end of the world, not wanting to think about anything except laying there, warm and safe and comfortable, curled up with Jennifer. Hell, there were even things that she ought to be thinking about, like the fact that she  _was_  laying there with Jennifer, too, about the fact that they had effectively taken their friendship to a  _whole_  new level, but... she didn't really want to think about it. Not now. Right now she wanted to relax and be happy.

The problem was that the television was still playing, the world was still falling apart, and the flesh eaters were still coming to kill them, if they could get to them.

Taking a deep breath, Emma murmured, "Can I get your help for a few minutes?"

"Sure, what do you need help with?" She asked.

"I need to get some stuff out of the basement." Emma admitted, and carefully slid off of the other's chest, smoothing down the front of her dress and wishing that she had thought to change out of it, maybe, before they got into making up and curling up on the couch, because it was definitely a wrinkly mess, now.

"What kind of stuff?" The other asked, then threw up her hands. "I mean, not that I'm trying to be nosy, or anything, but..."

"You had your tongue in my mouth, I think you have the right to be a little nosy," Emma snorted, and started leading the way to the basement door. It was just off of the kitchen, and a lot of people thought that it was a closet - not that a lot of people came into the house, anymore, but she could still remember being a kid and finding the basement a terribly exciting adventure - and opened the door for her. Reaching up, she pulled on the chain of the bare bulb that hung just inside the door, casting stark light over the staircase. She stepped carefully down the stairs, and glanced back to make sure that Jennifer was following her, smiling up at her. Once they were down onto the main floor of the basement, she reached up to pull the chain of another bare bulb, and lit up the mostly bare basement.

There wasn't a whole lot there, really, other than her washing machine and dryer, and then piles of cardboard boxes and things. Some were marked with "X-MAS" and "MOM'S STUFF" and "SCHOOL BOOKS" and those sorts of things, but she headed towards the back of the stack, and frowned as she dug through them for a bit, until she finally offered a box, marked "FROM DAD", to Jennifer. "This isn't too heavy, is it?"

Jennifer hefted the box, and shook her head. "Nope, it's good."

"Okay, well... gimme a second, I need to grab one more..." Emma leaned over, and grabbed another box marked the same, and straightened, carefully. It  _was_ heavy, but at least they were solid boxes, not going to fall apart, just being carried upstairs. "Okay, head on up."

"Yes ma'am," the other laughed, and started heading up. "What is this stuff, anyway?"

"Well... I sort of figured, if we're going to go to sleep... then I'd rather not be surprised by face eaters." Emma admitted, shifting the box slightly so that she could turn off the basement light behind them, then when they reached the top of the stairs, she tugged the chain to turn off  _that_  light, too, and hip checked the basement door closed behind her, before nodding, "Head to the living room, that's a good place to put them down."

"Sure, sounds great."

A moment later, both boxes were in the living room, and Emma took a deep breath, considering them for a long few seconds. "...well then. Time to get the house ready."

"Sure," Jennifer said, glancing at her. "...how are we getting your house ready?"

"Well, let's put it this way... would you  _like_  to be woken up by someone munching on your face?" Emma asked, grinning at Jennifer.

"...no, I can safely say that I do  _not_  want to have that happen."

"Then you need to trust me," she grinned, and crouched down in front of the boxes, opening the left one, first.

"...what is  _that_?"

"That, Jennifer, is a motion detector system." Emma grinned, resting her forearms on her knees as she looked into the box, considering it. "Two different kinds. You have these..." she held up a small, white camera. "Which are full motion detector cameras, put them up over a room, and it'll notice if anyone comes in. I figure if we put one in the living room, one in the kitchen, and one in the porch, we should have all the major low spots. But there's a second part... these thingers are broken line kinds. You know, like the laser ones you see in movies, that they use in museums? I've got a bunch of those, enough for every window and outside door of the house."

"...well, that's...  _awesome_ ," Jennifer said, crouching down beside her, frowning slightly. "But I have to ask...  _why_  do you have all of this stuff?"

"I've got this stuff because my father is paranoid." She smirked, rolling her eyes slightly.

"Ooooh... you moved into a house by yourself in the city, and he thought that someone was going to come attacking you, or something, so he sent along a motion detector system so that he would feel better about you living here, huh?" Jennifer grinned.

"Something like that," she said, and started sorting out the equipment. "All right, I'll show you how we need to get this set up."

It took them well over an hour, almost close to two, to set up the whole system, and Emma armed it, carefully, grinning. "Well then, that's a pretty damn good set up, actually, if you ask me. Pretty damn... safe."

"Very safe," Jennifer laughed. "Unless the power goes out."

"Eh, if the power goes out, there's a generator downstairs, too. I'm all set, if anything happens." Emma ran her hand through her hair, letting out a long breath. It had been fairly easy work, all things considered - she hadn't wanted it to look _pretty_ , just get the cameras and the detectors up and running and that was all it needed - but at least they were up. If anything happened, they would be alerted by the use of the portable alarm system she had, which reminded her terribly of a cross between a baby monitor and one of those "Help I've fallen and I can't get up" life alert thing. She hung the little alert on the bath style chain that it had around her neck, then hesitated, and offered the other alert thing to Jennifer. "I mean, you don't  _have_  to take it, but... if you want it..."

"Thanks." Jennifer said, and hung it around her neck.

She grinned, slightly, sort of pleased that Jennifer actually wanted to know that the house was safe. Because, yeah, it was probably just because Jennifer wanted to be safe too, but she sort of liked to think that maybe it was because Jennifer also cared about Emma's safety, too. Either way. "Okay, house is warded, if anyone tries to get in, we'll know. Otherwise... um. Bed?"

"Yeah. Bed sounds good." Jennifer said.

"I ah... I do...  _have_  a guest room..." Emma said, shifting her weight slightly from one foot to the other, biting her lip. "But... I'd rather... that you don't sleep there. I kind of don't want to be alone, right now."

"Neither do I," she said, without hesitation, which was a relief.

Emma smiled hopefully at her, and offered the other woman her hand, quietly. Jennifer smirked slightly, and took it, and let Emma lead her towards the stairs, then up them, passing deliberately just outside of the range of the motion detector cameras, so that they wouldn't set off their own damn alarms.

The second floor was quiet, the street lights from outside spilling in through the windows, casting squares of light on the wooden floors, and Emma lead her past the bathroom, the guest room that had once been her own bedroom, and into the master bedroom at the end of the hallway, the one that used to be her mothers, and now was her own, the room that she had moved into when she had moved back into the house, six years ago.

"Well, welcome to my room," Emma said, quietly, stepping away from her, and dropping her hand, finally. "I have some pajamas that might fit you, if you want...?"

"Yeah, sure," Jennifer murmured.

Flushed, she headed for her dresser to check for pajamas. The street lights, and the moonlight was pouring in through the windows, through the light white curtains, sheers that hung over the large windows and brushed the wooden floors, spilling onto the vintage styled quilts that Emma and her mother had made, when she was younger, that were spread out across the massive wrought iron bed frame, all delicate little lines with little metal flowers attached to it. Stepping over the rag rug at the end of the bed, walking past the old vanity that had dried roses pinned on the corner of the mirror, and a picture of her mother stuck up beside it, Emma offered the flannel pair of pajamas to Jennifer. "Not sure if you like the two piece kind or if you like night gowns, but...?"

"They're fine," the other girl said, taking them, then took a deep breath, biting her lip.

"Okay, I'm just gonna say it," Emma said, flushed. "Are we going to get naked in front of each other to get changed, or are we going to try and pretend that this didn't happen and maybe change in different rooms, or something?"

Jennifer laughed, flushed, and stepped closer to kiss Emma, softly.

And oh yeah, Emma could  _definitely_  get used to that.

Too soon, though, Jennifer stepped back, licking her lips, and said, "Um... do you have a bathroom...?"

"Nope." Emma teased, even as she lead her towards the en suite with its massive clawed foot tub and shower, grinning. "We don't believe in those vile heathen things in this house."

"Smart ass," she shot back, and slipped inside, wiggling the pajamas at her. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Yeah, yeah, well... I'll be here. You know, in my room. Waiting. I sound totally crazy, don't I?" Emma laughed, and went to dig her own pajamas out of the drawer, flushed slightly. The door closed behind Jennifer, and she sighed softly, relieved that Jennifer wasn't freaking out and thinking she was nuts, which was definitely an actual possibility, because at the moment she felt sort of nuts. At least she wasn't having a panic attack, anymore, that was a good start, but...

Emma shook her head, and started wriggling out of her dress, hanging it up in the closet, then tugged off her bra, tossed it into the laundry basket, and tugged on her pajamas, which were really nothing more than an overlarge t-shirt that hung almost to her knees, and tugged the edges of the blanket down, getting it ready to be crawled into.

The bathroom door opened, and Emma glanced up, grinning at Jennifer. "I guess I'm a little shorter than you, huh?"

"Just a touch," Jennifer agreed, dropping her clothes onto the Queen Anne style arm chair in the corner of the room, and padding towards her. She was wearing Emma's old flannel pajamas, a pale green plaid set with pants and a collared, buttoned shirt, but the pants didn't quite reach her feet, and the arms didn't quite reach her wrists. "At least I was able to button it up, that's what I was worried about."

"My clothes aren't  _that_  little," she snorted, and shoved at her shoulder, laughing.

"No, but  _you_  are," Jennifer said, grinning, and climbed up onto the bed itself, stretching slightly as she settled on it, wriggling her bare toes. "All right, well... night time, right?"

"Night time," Emma agreed, crawling into the bed herself, squirming under the covers. "I was thinking, though, we really ought to pack up clothes and foods and things, for our zombie survival plan, right? And we were going to leave some at the garage, but maybe we should have some here, too, or in the car, or... somewhere. More places, you know, just in case?"

"But what if I have my very favourite t-shirt that I couldn't live through the zombie apocalypse without?" Jennifer asked, smirking.

She snorted, squirming closer to her, and slipped her arms around the other's waist, quietly, relieved when the other woman didn't just push her off - which she could have, she knew that, if she didn't want to be the one comforting her, but instead, she just looped her arm around Emma's own shoulders, and held her a little closer - and Emma sighed softly, resting her head on the other's shoulder, not closing her eyes, just looking out over the room, at the moonlight that poured through the enclosed space. "Well then, maybe you should stick stuff like that in a backpack, and take that backpack with you everywhere. Actually, that's a probably good idea... I mean, we could pack up our trunks with boxes and stuff, get ready for the actual end of the world... then we can bring our own backpacks, you know, for personal stuff."

"Are you suggesting that we make sure to bring tampons and shit?" She smirked, planting a soft kiss in Emma's hair.

Emma laughed softly, and wriggled a little. "Of course we should. You think you really want to tempt the zombies to us by smelling deliciously like blood? I mean, come on, haven't you watched Pitch Black? The monsters come to eat them because the girl is bleeding. If Riddick says it's a good idea to take care of that, then it is  _totally_  a good idea to take care of that."

Jennifer stroked her back, laughing softly.

"Come on, you know I'm right."

"Yeah, you're right." She agreed, finally, and sighed heavily. "Should we try and actually sleep?"

"Oh, probably," Emma murmured, though her eyes weren't heavy, she didn't feel tired in the slightest, she sort of just wanted to stay as she was, curled close to her, and... maybe something would happen. Maybe she would finally find herself getting tired. Maybe she'd slip to sleep without meaning to, like she had earlier, when they were curled on the couch. "You first."

"We could try together?"

"Mm, sure." She breathed, snuggling into her a little, to get really comfortable, and closed her eyes, trying to convince her mind that she was tired and that she _wanted_  to go to sleep.

Jennifer started humming, quietly, some song that Emma had never heard before, but sounded like a lullaby, long and low and quiet, and when Jennifer hummed, she could feel it rumbling in the other's chest, through her cheek. Despite her beliefs that she was never going to be tired enough to fall to sleep again, Emma found herself slipping slowly and quietly into sleep, rocked to sleep by the notes of the song itself.


	3. Chapter 3

 The sound that woke Jennifer up was entirely unfamiliar, jarring and sort of alarming as it jangled against her ears. There was a soft groan, beside her, and she blinked, glancing beside her, then remembered that it was just Emma, who groaned softly as she shifted over on the bed, fingers fumbling on the bedside table. Her first thought went, abruptly, to the alarms that they had spent two hours setting up the night before, but no, the alarm that still hung around her neck wasn't the thing that was ringing, and when a bleary eyes looking Emma finally picked up her phone, she realized what it was.

 

"Hello?" Emma grumbled, voice rough and grumbly.

Jennifer couldn't blame her, and flopped back into the pillows, pushing her hair off of her forehead, and staring up at the slatted wood ceiling above them. She actually felt a lot  _better_ , which meant that she had managed to get some good sleep, after all, even though she'd laid awake for a long few hours after Emma had slipped to sleep, on her chest, last night. It had been nice, actually, curled up together, and she glanced over at the other woman, quietly, hoping that maybe this sort of thing was going to  _keep_  happening. If someone had called  _her_  at this time of the morning, on a Sunday, she'd be pretty pissy, too.

Well, maybe. What time  _was_  it?

Shifting up, she looked around for a clock, trying not to eavesdrop on Emma's conversation on the phone, and finally spotted a digital clock on the dresser, and checked it, frowning. Oh. It was almost one... well, okay, maybe it  _was_  a perfectly reasonable time of day to call someone, but come on, the world was falling apart at the seams, couldn't they focus on that, instead? That the world was ending?

"What?!" Emma yelped, and Jennifer twisted onto her side to consider her, frowning slightly.

"Come on!" She was saying, clearly frustrated, groaning. "This is my day off! My only fucking day off! Come one, why would I -  _Matthew_ , this is the day that you are supposed to work with one of those mythical 'other people' that we work with, and let me sleep in! The world is  _falling_   _apart_  Matthew, can't I enjoy my apocalypse in peace?!"

Jennifer laughed, softly, closing her eyes for a moment, just enjoying the sunlight that streamed in through the window, falling over her back and shoulders, warming her up, right to the core.

"Augh, all  _right_!"

Opening her eyes, she arched a brow. "Emma?"

"Why do people even fucking need a  _cell phone_  during an apocalypse anyway?" She muttered, slapping her phone down on the bedside table, then slipping out from under the blankets, stretching, widely. "Don't they know that once the power goes out - and the power  _will_  go out - that the infrastructure will disappear and we won't have cell phone service? Like, seriously, one bad thing happens, and people bolt to the cell phone store, desperate to get one, thinking that they can use it to get help anywhere and everywhere, but... cell phone service is one of the first things to go! It needs power  _everywhere_! I mean, sure, if your city is out, but the one beside it has it, you've probably got service, but if the whole fucking _country_  goes dark - and usually the whole fucking country will go dark, that's how apocalypse's work - then maybe they  _won't have cell service_!"

Jennifer tried not to laugh, she really did, but it was sort of hilarious, the way that she ranted about all sorts of things. She'd always liked the way that Emma ranted, as much as Emma usually seemed to apologize for them.

So she laughed anyway, sitting up, finally, and yawning. "All right, well... cell phones are important for the first part of the apocalypse, aren't they?"

"Sure, I guess, but... ugh. These people aren't planning for reliable zombie survival plans, they're just going to freak out and try to call 911 and 911 is going to get swamped with assholes that just don't know how to deal with zombies themselves, so they're going to run out of cops and ambulances, because they're going to send them after these fucking zombie swarms - that are  _going_  to be coming - and then all of the cops and paramedics are either going to be turned into zombies themselves, or they're going to be killed. They're all gonna be dead, and then  _who_ are they calling, then?"

"True. I guess we would use them for coordinating attacks?" Jennifer grinned, slipping out from under the blankets.

"Yeah, damn straight we would, we'd be downright soldier awesome about it." She said, and tugged the night gown over her head, tossing it on the bed, seeming to forget about the fact that they hadn't been dressing in front of each yet, and padded, in only her underwear - which was fucking adorable, Jennifer thought, with a written statement "SMARTY PANTS" on her ass - to the closet, digging through it for a few moments. Tugging on a tank top, Emma then tugged a heavy looking sweater over that, and started wriggling into a pair of jeans. "I'm not _supposed_  to be going to work today, so I'm not going to be wearing work clothes to work, I'm going to wear fucking jeans. You need any clean clothes, or anything? I might have some sweaters that will fit you..."

"Hm. Mine aren't so bad, but a sweater's not a bad idea," she shrugged, and followed the other's lead, starting to strip out of her borrowed pajamas, and started pulling on her old clothes. They weren't  _too_  covered in oil. Okay, they were, but...

It was the end of the world. Couldn't she wear crappy clothes in the apocalypse if she wanted to?

"Here," Emma grinned up at her, offering her a wool sweater, dark green with a lot of cables worked into the pattern. "Do you have to go to work, or home, or anything, today?"

"Mm, nope." She shook her head. "Garage is closed on Sunday."

"Then... you want to come to work with me?" Emma grinned up at her, wiggling a little, where she stood, looking hopeful. Reminded Jennifer of an eager puppy dog, hoping that she was going to get affection. "Cause I mean, I could use some company while I fight off the hoards of idiots that want to get cell phones."

"You sure your boss would let me be there?" She frowned, considering that.

"Do I look like I give a shit about what he thinks?" Emma asked, arching a single brow. "The world is ending, and I'm wearing jeans. Want to come?"

"Sure, I'll come," she nodded, and bent to kiss her, lightly.

And to her relief, Emma didn't protest now that it was the light of day, she just pressed further into the kiss, slipping her arms around Jennifer's shoulders for a few moments, and kissing her back, softly, before she finally broke the kiss, panting, and pressed her forehead to Jennifer's. "...well then. Let's go to work and see if we can ward off the apocalypse."

"Yes ma'am." She smirked, brushing her hair back.

"All right. Let's go, then." Emma headed for the door, then doubled back and grabbed Jennifer's hands, looking up at her, seriously. "I'm going to have to get some other stuff from my closet, before we leave. Just in case. Try not to, ah... be alarmed or think really awful things about what I'm going to get, okay?"

Jennifer arched a brow, surprised, but finally nodded. "All right, fine, I can do that."

"Awesome, you're great." She grinned, and darted for the stairs again.

Well, now Jennifer just had to know  _what_  exactly she was going to get that she wasn't supposed to be alarmed about. Burning with curiosity, she followed her, thumbs hooked in her pockets, and walked down the steps after her, watching as Emma deactivated the motion detector system they'd set up last night, so that they could walk around the rest of the house. A few minutes later, Emma darted into the kitchen, returned with a pair of bananas, one of which she handed to Jennifer, then headed for the front hall closet.

Tugging it open, Emma dug through the coats for a moment, handing Jennifer hers, then tugging on her own scarf, looping it around her neck.

And  _then_  Emma pulled out the things that she had warned Jennifer about.

Which, she supposed,  _could_  be probably somewhat alarming.

"Hold this for a second, will you?" Emma thrust a shot gun at Jennifer, and she took it, slowly, a little startled by it. She knew that everyone had the  _right_  to bear arms, and all, but she sort of hadn't expected for little blond Emma to have one. Or two. Or three, why the hell did this girl have so many  _guns_?

Setting a sawed off shotgun on her shoulder, Emma stood up on her toes to pull down a couple of boxes of ammo off of the top shelf, checking the amounts in the boxes, then grabbing her backpack, and started shoving them into it. Shoving the sawed off in, after it, she said, "Don't tell anyone that I'm bringing this with me either, okay? Because it is  _so_  illegal to be bringing this to work, apocalypse or not, but I really don't want to leave this house without a gun, frankly, so..."

"You, ah... have a few of these." Jennifer said, at last, looking at the gun she still held in her hands.

"Yeah, I ah... I did say not to panic?" She suggested, with a sheepish sort of grin. "Or be alarmed by this? Look, I have a lot of guns. More than these, once upon a time, but these are the only ones I kept. Three is more than enough for the average person. But hey, this means that if things get awful, and you and Tom and I have to run for the hills... I've got a gun for each of us." She hesitated, considering that for a moment, then said, "Matthew will have to figure out what to do with a gun, I sort of get the impression he's never shot one in his life..."

"...I've never shot a gun before in my life, either." Jennifer admitted, feeling the completely alien shape in her hands.

"...that does make things more difficult." Emma pursed her lips, frowning slightly. "You willing to learn?"

"I'm willing to learn," she said, with a shrug, and looked up at Emma. "But if we just make a stop by my house, on the way to your job, I can propose a better solution."

"Deal." She grinned.

They climbed back into Emma's car, the alarm system reset, the alarm alerts still around their necks, and they headed down towards Jennifer's apartment. She was rather pleased, actually, by the way that the car purred around them, and she grinned, patting the dashboard. "Your car sounds awesome right now, doesn't it?"

"Yeah... a lot better than it did before," Emma agreed, glancing over at her. "It's awesome. And so not worth two hundred and fifty."

"It's probably worth a bit more than two hundred and fifty," she agreed, smirking slightly, as she stretched. "But I didn't charge you for it, so you shouldn't be complaining."

"Do I  _sound_  like I'm complaining?"

"Nope, not really. You know what we might need, though, if the actual apocalypse _is_  beginning?" Jennifer frowned slightly, considering the view as they drove through the streets. There didn't seem to be anyone out on the streets, and the people in the vehicles they passed looked skittish, nervous. Everyone knew about the disasters and the people that were being eaten, there couldn't be anyone who didn't know. There  _were_  a lot of cars passing, though, and when they drove past the grocery stores, there were a  _lot_  of people there, considering it was a Sunday afternoon. Normal people didn't swarm to go shopping on Sunday afternoons, but then, in the middle of a zombie attack, was there really such a thing as a 'normal person'? "Maybe we ought to look into getting a trailer, or something, somewhere that we could live, while travelling around."

"Huh, that's actually pretty smart," Emma agreed, after a moment. "Except that wouldn't it be a bad idea to slow ourselves down?"

"Well, maybe we need a more powerful vehicle to pull it, so we  _don't_  get slowed down." Jennifer agreed, frowning slightly. "I mean, I fixed up your car pretty damn well, but I'm not sure it's 'outrun the zombies' fast. You know, the tow truck could do it."

"The tow truck?" Emma crinkled her nose slightly, pulling onto Jennifer's block, pulling up in front of her apartment building. "It's kind of... smells like gas."

"...it's a zombie apocalypse, Emma."

"Yes it is," she agreed, smirking slightly, and nodded at the apartment building. "Want me to come up, or do you want me to stay here?"

"Stay here, protect the car from looting." Jennifer hesitated, wondering if she could lean forward and kiss her again, but they were in public, and that would probably get awkward, and she decided that this would probably get awkward if she did, and just smiled at Emma, and slipped out of the car. Closing the door behind her, she waved, then headed for the apartment building, and jogged up the steps.

Letting herself into her apartment, she kicked the door shut, glad that Emma _hadn't_  come upstairs, because frankly her apartment was an absolute mess, unpacked boxes still stacked against the wall, dishes unwashed for about a week on the counter, laundry scattered across her bedroom floor. After seeing Emma's neat as a pin little house that she had kept in perfect vintage girly shape, she certainly didn't want her to see the mess that Jennifer was currently living in. Granted, she would have maybe had less of a mess if she had been living here for even a month yet, but... well, no, she had to be honest with herself. It probably wouldn't be terribly neat, either. It wouldn't have necessarily been  _this_  messy, but it sure would have been a pigsty still.

Grabbing a duffle bag, she shoved some of her clothes into it, along with her tooth brush and other essentials, then pulled out the heavy black case from where she had tucked it, safe as she could manage in her apartment, out from under her bed. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she left, not really expecting, at this moment, to be coming back.

Maybe they'd be lucky. Maybe the zombies  _wouldn't_  attack Portland. But maybe they  _would_ , and at the moment, she was planning on staying with Emma, to keep her and hers safe.

Everything she wanted, everything she  _needed_ , everything she actually cared about was in her duffle or in this case, and she didn't need anything else in that apartment, if push came to shove. Opening the back door of Emma's car, she tossed in her duffle, and carefully slid the large black case onto the back seat.

"What's that?" Emma asked, twisting in her seat to look at it.

"That is my alternate to learning how to use a gun," she grinned, and slammed the door shut, and headed into the front passenger seat, slipping into it. "And it's going to be good, I promise."

"...you're sure?" She smirked.

"Absolutely, now... get to work before your poor boss goes absolutely ballistic and his head bursts, or something." Jennifer grinned, leaning back. "I got anything I need, too, so we can stay at your place for awhile, if you don't mind me hanging around, or anything, so..."

"I don't want you to leave." Emma said, seriously.

She grinned slightly, reaching over to squeeze the other's shoulder, gently, and murmured, "Thanks, Emma."

"Hey, I don't kiss people I want to leave me alone," she said, grinning slightly, and they headed towards the mall.

When they got there, though, there was almost no parking. It was almost impossible to find a spot, as for the first time since Jennifer had moved to the city, the parking lot was absolutely packed full. "Shit," she breathed, as Emma finally eased into a parking space, far from the mall entrance. "I've never seen any place this busy. Not even at Christmas. I guess everyone really  _is_  freaking out, aren't they?"

"Looks that way," Emma agreed, slipping out of the car.

"You mind if I take this with me, inside?" Jennifer slid out of the seat, reaching for the massive black case. "I mean, it's not like I want to use it there, or anything, it's just that it's definitely the most valuable thing that I own, or have ever owned, or probably ever  _will_  own, and I'd like to not leave it out here, not now. I mean, not that I think your car looks like a tempting target to thieves or looters, or anything, but... I just don't feel like it's safe," she cleared her throat, slightly flushed. "Sorry."

"Yeah, I don't mind." Emma shrugged, tugging her backpack on. "I'm bringing a sawed off into work, you can bring your case."

"Thanks," she grinned, and reached over to squeeze the other's shoulder again.

Emma caught her off guard, though, slipping closer to her, and kissed her again, just a light peck, not a real, solid kiss, but it was  _good_ , even out here where anyone walking past could see, it was still something.

"C'mon," she offered Jennifer her hand. "Let's go to my job. Where people will be insane and slightly terrifying."

Taking the hand with her free hand, she shook her head, and grinned. "Let's go."

 

+++

 

Jennifer sat on a straight backed chair in the back of the cell phone store that Emma worked in, letting her fingers rest on the top of her case, as she kept it propped up beside her, a comforting presence, considering everything. The TV was still turned onto the news out there, which probably wasn't helping to calm the ravenous need for panic that the customers that were swarming the store were feeling, but it wasn't like they could put the tv on anything  _else_  - not and keep it on, in any case. There just wasn't anything else  _on_. The coworker that had been supposed to be working that day wasn't there, had apparently deemed it a better idea to panic and hide than go into work and fulfill her responsibilities, so that was why Emma was out there, now, protected by the slight barrier of the counter as she tried to make impatient and panicky customers at least a little happier.  
  
She would dip into the back room every ten minutes or so, going to check the massive metal cage that they kept the cell phones in, and when she did, Emma would snag a long swallow of water, or a few times a very quick kiss, nothing more than a brief brush of lips on lips, then she would take a deep breath, grab the product that she had come back here to find, then go back out to brave the crowds again.   
  
One time, when she came back, she said, "If I actually thought that I was going to  _get_  my paycheck for this weekend, I would be making a nice little tidy sum of commission today, let me tell you. These assholes are signing onto three year contracts willy nilly, just trying to get  _something_. The networks are going to go down when the country goes down, you idiots!"  
  
Jennifer had laughed, and said, "Think positive, maybe Portland will remain zombie free until  _after_  the next pay day."  
  
"Fat chance," she had grumbled, and grabbed yet another iPhone before heading back out into the fray.  
  
Matthew would dart back, sometimes, too, and would lean on his desk for a moment, drawing a few shuddery breaths, before he too would grab what he needed and head back out.   
  
One time, as he was leaning on the desk, and Jennifer sat there, sipping at a glass of water she'd gotten from the water cooler in the corner, he'd said, "Want a job?"  
  
"Sure," She had smirked. "But I don't know the first thing about cell phones other than they make phone calls."  
  
"Not what I wanted. Emma and I can handle the idiots trying to buy phones... or until we run out, or the zombies attack, whichever comes first. I dunno which will be first, really, I don't... probably the phones," He waved at the now starting to look bare bones cage. "See? But I need someone who can guard the back room. Just... sit in the doorway, and don't let anyone but us back here, and... make sure looters don't steal the phones."  
  
"Don't they realize that in the case of a full fledged... zombie attack, that cell phones would be absolutely useless?" She arched her brows, frowning.  
  
"Sure, they probably do, but they're human, right? And humans are stupid, and we tend to go 'oooh, looting time' and take the most valuable things, the things that we wanted, even though it's stupid and we won't have power to run them and looting the grocery store would make a  _lot_  more sense. But it's always electronic stores that get looted, not grocery stores. So. You wanna be the phone guard for me?"  
  
She glanced at the cage, and shrugged. "Why not?"  
  
So Matthew handed her a key, said, "That's how to lock it up, with the padlock that's hanging there, and just, you know, sit in the door, make sure they don't come back here."  
  
She had slid her case towards the door, sitting in the broken-ass black fake leather desk chair that was sitting in front of the door, and said, "Aren't they going to ask why I'm sitting here watching you and not helping them?"  
  
"I'll tell them you're the guard." He said, snagging yet another iPhone from the cage, and darting outside.   
  
So there she sat, one hand resting on the handle of her case, watching the crowds.  
  
There were a  _lot_  of people in the store, actually.  
  
Milling about, talking rapidly and with sort of panicked tones to each other, they were impatiently waiting for Emma and Matthew to help them, but Emma and Matthew were working as fast as they could, actually, she could see them typing, fighting the computer system to make it listen to them, trying to get people in and out as quickly as they could. A few of the people were looking angry, some of them raising their voices as they talked to each other, trying to implicate that  _they_  were more important than whoever else was being helped at that moment. It wasn't really making them move any faster, so she was waiting for them to realize that they were idiots, and that they were going to get served when they got fucking served. A few of the entitled assholes actually marched up to her, sitting in the doorway, and demanded that she serve them.   
  
She looked up at them, calmly, and said, "I'm not a sales associate, sir or madam, I'm security."  
  
Every single one of them gaped at her, startled, and demanded to know what she meant, and why the hell she wasn't helping them, and their voices would start to rise, and they would start to get louder, freaking out more and more, and she would calmly tighten her grip on the handle of her case, that was large and sort of rhombus shaped, vague enough that it was hard to guess what could possibly be inside, but still, apparently the fact that she tugged it forward seemed to indicate to them that it was something that she was willing to use - and on them, if necessary - and they tended to bolt back into the ever waiting crowd to wait for their turn to be served.  
  
It was sort of a gratifying feeling, actually, being intimidating.  
  
Other than just being a continual reminder of the fact that this store gave a shit about whether or not someone looted them or not, there wasn't really a whole lot of other function for her to serve, there, so Jennifer ended up sitting back in that broken ass chair, and watching the news on her phone. There didn't really seem to be anything else on the internet, a scroll through YouTube told her that all of the highest results were either news reports about the epidemic of people eating people, religious groups putting out messages of 'this is why you need salvation', or people dressing up in extremely poor taste zombie costumes and trying to scare their friends. There was also one news report about a mother that had shot her teenaged son because she thought he was a zombie, but he was really just trying to record one of those tasteless YouTube videos, and they actually showed the _footage_  that had been recording at the time, and...  
  
Jennifer very quickly backed out of that video, and went looking for something else.  
  
Seven or eight videos deep into a 'related video' train that had led her to an Indian report about the attacks in Mumbai, Jennifer looked up sharply at the sound of Emma saying, quite a bit louder than her usual conversation tone, "I'm sorry, sir, but we are  _sold out_  of iPhones at the moment, and you're simply going to have to either choose another phone, or try one of the other locations, we don't have any to sell."  
  
The customer that she was talking to, the one standing directly on the other side of the counter from her, was three hundred pounds if he was any, portly and very tall, balding, and his entire head, from his double chins to the top of his chrome dome, was bright red. Clearly her announcement that she was  _out_  of his desired phone was not the statement that he had  _wanted_  to hear, but it wasn't like it was really  _that_  big of a deal, was it? Jennifer thought, frowning. After all, yes, maybe the world was ending, but maybe they had bigger things to deal with than whether or not they had the newest  _smart phone_.  
  
Only apparently her assessment that it wasn't really that big of a deal was not shared by the man on the other side of the counter.   
  
Because instead of speaking like a rational human being, or trying to figure out if maybe he wanted a different phone, this big fucker reeled back, and shoved Emma, hard, certainly hard enough that she stumbled back against the wall, eyes wide and startled, mouth hanging open in shock.  
  
Matthew let out a rather high pitched sound, eyes wide, and stepped forward, between where Emma had been and the man was, and in his most aggressive, affirmative action type of voice, he said, "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave, immediately, before I call the police and report you for assault on my staff."  
  
"I ain't leaving without my iPhone!" The man bellowed, looking fair to burst a blood vessel in his head. "I know you're hiding them back there, you just don't want to serve me!"  
  
"I can assure you, that if I had any - "  
  
Jennifer wasn't waiting to see if Matthew could resolve this peacefully, or if he had to call the cops, or anything else. He had deemed her security, and if she was going to be security, she was going to do it  _right_ , god damn it, and she was already flicking open her carrying case, tugging her equipment out.  
  
"You liar!" The man roared, spittle flying across the counter as he screamed, furiously. He was clearly not handling this rejection - even though it wasn't actually rejection, but a simple problem with supply and demand - quite personally, and quite seriously. "I know you're keeping them back there, you just don't want to give them to us!"  
  
"Yeah!" Someone else from somewhere in the crowd -  _protected by the anonymity of the masses, nice move, coward_  - shouted, and that just seemed to serve to rile the man up even more. "Give us our phones! Give us the phones! Give us the phones!"  
  
"All right, that's it!" Matthew was trying to shout, trying to still sound like the voice of authority in the midst of all of this insanity. "I'm going to have to ask you to all leave the store, there is another location down the street - "  
  
"They're not listening, Matthew," Emma said, eyes wide as she grabbed for the land line, dialing 911.   
  
The asshole that had started it all rounded the desk, heading straight for Jennifer and the back room, clearly intending to get this alleged iPhone that he believed they were withholding from him, himself, when he drew up short, several of the mob mentality people behind him that had been following running straight into his broad back.  
  
Jennifer stood in the doorway of the back room, her compound bow held in front of her, arrow on the line, and the string pulled back. Elbow perfectly straight, she stood 'kissing the string' as it were, at full drawback, and said, perfectly calmly, "The first asshole that tries to walk through this door gets the arrow through their... hm. Left eye."  
  
The man roared at her, a wordless expression of rage that seemed to her no more than the bellowing of an angry, belligerent, perhaps wounded bovine, and took another couple steps forward. "Go ahead and try it, little fucking girl, I'll break you over my knee so fast you'll - "  
  
Jennifer jerked the line of her aim up so that the actual tip of the arrow was aimed directly at his left eye. It wasn't actually quite the proper distance for shooting, she was much more comfortable with distances, but it was certainly an effective tactic for fear, even if her shooting coach was screaming at her in the back of her head that she was never, ever,  _ever_ supposed to aim the bow at another human being, someone could get  _hurt_. Well, if this asshole didn't stop coming, he was  _going_  to get hurt. "I am going to give you until the count of five. Then, if your fat ass isn't outside of these doors, and you aren't running for your car, this arrow, and every other arrow in my quiver is going to fill your head so full of fucking arrows that you will look like you tried to give a blow job to a porcupine."  
  
That  _did_  make the man pause.  
  
"She's bluffing!" Someone back in the crowd called, maybe the same person that had tried to instigate the riot in the first place. Figured, the asshole was trying to push so that he could try and get some looting in. "They can't fucking shoot you, it's illegal!"  
  
" _Illegal_?" Jennifer repeated, the arrow still pointed very directly at the leader's eye. "Hey, Emma, this guy just attacked you without provocation. In your estimation, did you think that maybe he was a zombie that was coming to eat your face?"  
  
Emma stepped up beside her, glowering at this man, a bruise already starting to form on her collarbone, in the little space that was still visible from the gap of the neck of her sweater. "In my estimation, he  _was_  a zombie coming to eat my face."  
  
"Well then." Jennifer grinned, arrow still on his eye. "I think, under martial law, that I am allowed to protect myself against any perceived threats, and I certainly perceive zombies as threats. So. One."  
  
She didn't even  _need_  to get to two, though she was certainly shouting the numbers over the sudden burst of sound and frenzy as the massive man turned tail, and pushed his way through his crowd of previous backers to try and get out of the store as quickly as possible. Frankly, she couldn't blame him for the desperation, because faced with a head full of arrows, she too might have chosen to run before becoming Saint Sebastian, but she still kept her bow up, arrow pointed steadily at the left eye of anyone else that thought that, in the wake of his escape, that maybe they should try his luck. As soon as they realized that she wasn't going to back down, and she wasn't going to stand aside and let them peacefully loot like they wanted to - at least not without an arrow sticking out of their left eye - the other started bolting, too, scampering away like rats from a sinking ship, until they were the only three left behind in the store.  
  
"Close the doors," Matthew panted, eyes wide. "Lock it, too."  
  
Emma darted towards the gates, moving to do exactly that, and Jennifer followed her, standing just over her shoulder, arrow still pulled back on the string, cocked to fire, until the doors were nearly shut, then slipped inside, and watched as the blonde locked up.  
  
Then, and  _only_  then, did she relax her hold, letting the string go back into place again, and dropping the arrow back into the quiver that she had just tossed over one shoulder. She should really be wearing it properly, if she aimed not to get it in the way, but at the moment, she had been more focused on stopping them than on proper form.  
  
"That was  _amazing_!" Emma shouted, and threw her arms around her, hugging Jennifer tightly. "I have never been so impressed in my life!"  
  
"That was... certainly something." Matthew said, eyes wide as he stepped closer to them, looking at her with a whole new respectful light. "I told you we should have hired her, Emma."  
  
Emma snickered, and nudged Jennifer's side. "You really showed  _those_  assholes, could you imagine? As if we'd just be fucking hoarding iPhones..."  
  
"All though, of course, there is entirely a possibility that we could be hit with about thirty different lawsuits," Matthew admitted, as he sat heavily in the crappy desk chair that Jennifer had vacated. "From everyone that was in the store at the time it happened, and of course, the man that you threatened could claim terroristic threats and have the store shut down, and..."  
  
"Breathe, Matthew," Emma patted his shoulder. "You're no use to anyone if you die from an asthma attack."  
  
"I don't have asthma," he said, voice slightly muffled, as he leaned forward to let his head hang between his knees, and tried desperately to breathe.  
  
"Anyone can have stress-induced asthma attacks," Emma started, feeding him the same bullshit line that she had fed her the night before, and Jennifer snorted softly, before moving towards the doors, to check and make sure that none of the rioters had decided to double back and try their luck again. The doors were massive, accordion style, with glass panels that were held together by massive metal plates. All in all, it made for doors that were quite heavy, and were allegedly hard to break into, which naturally was a very good feature for a business. They also distorted the world that you saw through them a little, but it was still clear enough for her to look down one direction of the hallway, then the other.  
  
What seemed odd, all things considered, was how  _empty_  the hallways looked. Even just a few minutes before, there had been dozens of people, not just those swarming their own store, but also those that had been filling the mall itself, people that were trying to get everything they thought they might need to face the end of the world. Not necessarily a bad idea, really, except that they were all trying to do it at  _once_ , which was never really an advisable way of doing it. But now, there was  _no one_ , the halls were empty.  
  
"Guys?" Jennifer called, quietly, glancing back at the door, where Emma was still trying to talk Matthew down from his panic.  
  
"Yeah?" Emma looked up from her manager, frowning slightly.  
  
"Is there a way that we can fortify the store any better than just the door?" She asked, tugging an arrow out of her quiver again, and knocking it to the string, through she didn't draw back.   
  
"...why?" Matthew asked, looking up, frowning.   
  
"Because the mall is completely empty," she said, and glanced at Emma, frowning. "Text Tom. SOS. And tell him to come here, I don't think we can get there."  
  
"What are you  _talking_  about?" Matthew demanded, looking slightly green. Did they seriously just get themselves saddled with someone that couldn't handle a little stress? Because they needed him to keep his head about himself and  _not_  just run to puke every time that something happened, if they were going to be stuck with him. He twisted to gape at Emma as she tugged her phone out of her jeans pocket and texted, quickly, then back at Jennifer. "What is  _going on_?!"  
  
"Look at the TV, Matthew," Jennifer said, frowning as she turned to look out the front doors again, bow at the ready.  
  
The chair squeaked as Matthew stood, and moved towards the television, and she heard the choked sort of sound he made when he saw what she had just seen herself.  
  
 _THE RESIDENTS OF PORTLAND, OREGON, ARE ADVISED TO GET INDOORS WITHOUT DELAY. THE CANNIBAL ATTACKERS HAVE BEEN SIGHTED ALONG THE SOUTH EAST DIVISION STREET REGION AND AUTHORITIES ARE ADVISING THAT ALL CITIZENS RETURN TO THEIR HOMES AND DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OPEN THE DOORS OR WINDOWS. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ENGAGE THE ATTACKERS.  
_  
There was nothing else on the television. The screen was otherwise black with those red words scrolling across the screen, over and over, warning them to not be out in the open, to get inside,  _do not attempt to engage_...  
  
"Oh god," Matthew gasped, and when she glanced back, she got to watch him slump so that he sat on the floor, with the chaotic gold swirls in the dark blue carpet, gaping up at the television.  
  
"Did we just saddle ourselves with an idiot for the apocalypse?" Jennifer demanded, arching a brow as she looked up at Emma.  
  
Emma crinkled her nose, looking down at Matthew, who had now started rocking slowly back and forth in place. She had her sawed-off in hand, now, leaning on her shoulder, and in that moment, Jennifer was absolutely certain that she thought that Emma was perfect. "...yeah, we might have. We can use him as zombie bait if we have to. Tom's coming, he's bringing the tow truck, he says, claims it has the most power for blasting through hordes of zombies."  
  
"...lovely." She rolled her eyes, and glanced back out the door. "But seriously, is there anywhere we can go that's going to be a little more fortified than this?"

  
+++

  
"Well, unless we're looking at runners, or something, or Silent Hill zombies, we should be all right up here," Emma said, leaning over the edge of the roof of the mall, grinning as she did. The whole of the parking lot spilled out beyond them, in every direction, and from here, they had a good vantage point to see all of the roads coming into the mall, and presumably anywhere that zombies might be coming from. "I don't think the undead and ladders get along too well."  
  
Jennifer was perched on the edge of one of the walls, right where the built in ladder that they had climbed to get here was set into the wall, her bow still in hand. "Sure, but I'd still feel better if we had a way of getting rid of the ladder."  
  
"Well," she headed towards her, fingers curled reassuringly around the stock of her sawed-off, wishing that she had her other guns with her - they were much better for range, this was better for brute messy force up close - and looked down the ladder. "We could find a way to grease it up, or something, pour oil down the rungs..."  
  
"I'd like to remind you that  _we_  still need to get back down this ladder, to get to Tom and the truck," Jennifer pointed out, smirking.   
  
"Details." She grinned, mischievously, and leaned on Jennifer's shoulder for a moment. "You don't really mind dragging Matthew along, do you?"  
  
"No." She admitted. "Though I wish he was a little more useful."  
  
"He designs a mean business card," Emma grinned at her. "I'm sure he could design the zombies up some letter heads and distract them while we run for the hills?"  
  
"Awesome." She rolled her eyes, but she was grinning, all the same. "How much ammo you packing, there?"  
  
"I have three boxes, fifty rounds a box. Hopefully it'll be enough to get us going," Emma frowned slightly, reaching back to touch the bottom of her backpack, feeling the little square boxes shift reassuringly in there. "I wish I had more, but... I didn't honestly think I'd need much in the city. There's a sporting goods store down the road, about a five minute drive. If we can manage to get there, and it's not too zombie infested, and it hasn't already been looted to death, I'd like to see if we can get some more."   
  
"Yeah," the other nodded, frowning. "I only have twenty five arrows... I have to use them sparingly. A supply would be a life saver."  
  
"Yeah, no kidding, at least yours is silent, all I've got is my damn noisy sawed off," Emma sighed, slightly disappointed, though she  _did_  love this gun. Had sawn the barrels down herself, with her father at her shoulder, guiding her hand, and there were still little strange burrs in the metal work of the barrel, from where her young hands had slipped while wielding the hack saw. She was proud of it, so at least she had this one, and not the personality-less rifles that were stuffed under the back seat of her car. Oh, her poor car, that she had  _just_  gotten fixed, and probably wasn't likely to drive again. "You didn't tell me you were an archer, though."  
  
"Well, you didn't tell me you were a gun toting nut," Jennifer shot back, though she was grinning, to show that she didn't actually mean it.  
  
"Nut? I am exercising my Second Amendment rights, thank you very much," she grinned, pleased. "All the same. Archery is pretty badass."  
  
"Thanks," Jennifer nodded, glancing down at the bow. "I've been shooting since I was old enough to walk, really. My dad was a former Olympian, and he really wanted me to carry on the family legacy and all, you know? I've got a few national titles, and I've shot Olympic qualifiers before, but I didn't shoot high enough to get in, so... it was supposed to be something I was working on, to hopefully get to the next Summer Games, but... I don't think  _that's_  going to be happening." She shrugged. "This isn't my Olympic bow, that's still at my apartment, but... I sort of figured I really only had two arms, so I could really only use one bow at once, so... of the two, this one is going to get me more strength behind my shots. It's got a heavier draw back."  
  
"I'm gonna have to take your word on it," Emma grinned, ruffling the other's hair, slightly. "My dad tried to teach me how to shoot a bow when I was a kid, but all I managed to shoot was the ground, so... no dice. I'm no good at it."  
  
"I'm more than willing to teach you sometime," Jennifer grinned, looking up at her, leaning back into her chest for a moment.  
  
"I'll take you up on that," she grinned, then looked up sharply when Matthew came running towards them, calling for her, tripping over his own feet as he did. Nearly dropping on his face, he scrambled up to his feet, and pointed towards the North. "I think they're coming...."  
  
"Yeah?" Emma dropped immediately into the role that had been hers when she was a little girl, of keeping an eye out, and then keeping everyone abreast of the situation. When she was little, that had meant sitting on her father's shoulders, his binoculars clutched tightly in her fingers as she looked out over the fields, then when she spotted anyone coming, she would bounce up and down on his shoulders, and call, top of her lungs, "They're coming daddy, they're coming!" and then her father would swing her down off of his shoulders, set her on her feet, then he would run into the war games that he ran with his friends, paintball gun firing. Now that she was an adult, and she was the one holding the gun, this meant that she moved to the edge of the roof, and motioned for them to move closer, pointing to the road that Matthew had spotted the movement on. "Looks like there's maybe a dozen of them, doesn't look like we're too heavily infected, yet."  
  
"Think they spread the infection through a bite?" Jennifer asked, leaning on the wall, beside her.  
  
"Probably. But that's mostly just popular myth.... but if it spreads like most other infections, it's probably either saliva to blood or blood to blood. Until we can prove it one way or the other,  _no one get bit_ , got it?"  
  
"Wasn't planning on it," Matthew said, faintly.  
  
She looked sharply at her manager, brows furrowed for a moment, then twisted to look back over the roof, considering where was the best place, tactically, to put him. There was a heating unit on the roof, one that jutted up above the rest of it, and had a narrow ladder on the side leading up towards the top, which standing on her toes told her looked flat.   
  
"Matthew!" She called, moving towards the heating unit. "Up top, mister."  
  
"Up top?!" He repeated, looking sort of horrified, following her with wide eyes, swallowing hard.   
  
"Yeah, get up top. We need someone to keep an eye on the situation, and since you have no weapons... lucky you." She pointed at the ladder. "Come get up there, princess. We need you to be our eye in the sky."  
  
"...okay." He swallowed, and grabbed the ladder, tugging his lanky frame up the ladder, as quickly as he could manage, flopping up on the top of the heating unit, panting slightly as he tried to avoid from freaking out.   
  
She could see the fear in his eyes, so she said, firmly, "Matthew, look at me. We are depending on you to keep us alive, you hear me, okay? So you need to keep a sharp eye on everything, and if you see anything coming that we're not seeing, we need you to shout, you got it? Top of your lungs."  
  
"I am not a  _child_ , Emma," Matthew said, though he was clearly panting too hard, hands clenched into tight fists.   
  
"I know, genius." She smirked, and headed to the edge of the roof where Jennifer was waiting, swinging her backpack off of her shoulder so that she could rummage through it, setting a box of bullets on the floor of the roof beside them, and kneeling beside the bullets and her backpack, resting her elbows on the edge of the roof as she consider the approaching mass. They weren't moving too fast, as though they were walking, but they certainly weren't walking slowly like the shuffling of the undead that she had been expecting. They just seemed to be walking like a normal person might walk, if they were trying to reach the mall, and apparently going in a group. "So why are they coming here, exactly?"  
  
"Mobile Happy Meals," Jennifer murmured, and motioned at the parking lot.  
  
Jennifer had noticed something that  _she_  hadn't yet, and Emma sort of felt like kicking herself for  _not_  having noticed that. There were  _people_  in the cars. Not all of them, but a lot of them had people still inside, and as she looked out on what was usually neat orderly rows, she realized that not  _all_  of them  _were_  in said neat orderly rows. There were a few places that the cars had clearly bashed into each other, like bumper cars, and she breathed out, slowly.  
  
Emma finally realized what had happened, why the halls had emptied so quickly.  _Their_ store had cleared because of Jennifer and her bow. The  _other_  stores had emptied because of the warnings that had been blaring on the television - and the radio, they had heard it when they had left their store, playing on repeat from the local radio station, the same warning to get inside and try not to confront any of the "rioters" - and they had all bolted for their cars. The problem was, once whey were out at their cars, they hadn't pulled out of their parking spots like sensible or normal people, they had bolted like crazy people, and now, like the crazy idiots that they were, they were trapped in their cars, watching as these bloodstained ravenous once people approached.  
  
"The idiots," she breathed. "Not everyone is trapped, they could just run..."  
  
"They're still thinking like humans," Jennifer murmured. "They think they can't just drive through them..."

"They just... they're going to get eaten, if they just sit there," Emma whispered, eyes wide as she looked out over the sea of cars. "Not everyone... they are going to be... god, the zombies... they can't just be undead beasts."

"What?" Jennifer glanced at her, sharply.

"They can't just be undead walking... dead." Emma motioned to them, frowning as she considered the way that they were approaching. "If they were just the walking dead, they would just be... following people. Finding someone that was alive, and following the sound, but there is no  _sound_  right now. I'm not even hearing cars. They're... sentient. Or... maybe they have access to their memories still, or something, but I think they're still remembering things, because if they were remembering things, well... where would they remember to go, to find a lot of people in one place? They'd go to the mall. They're not... dead."

"Or not undead, anyway," Jennifer murmured, frowning slightly. "Think that means that they're able to climb ladders?"

"...I don't want to admit it, but yeah, I think there's a  _real_  good chance that they can climb ladders." She abruptly twisted, and thumped down to sit on the roof, frowning as she held her sawed off tightly in her hands, relieved, at least, to have that. "I don't think we should shoot at them."

"...what? You think we should just  _let_  them come up and eat us?!" Jennifer squawled.

"What? No. Of course not. I mean... if they come up here, shoot away. Shoot their faces off, we need to stop and kill as many of them as possible. But... I mean, if they  _don't_  start coming up here, if they don't realize that we're here... don't draw their attention to us. I mean, if they realize we're here... we've got the vantage point up here, and we've got the defensible point, but if they come up here, there's nowhere for us to  _run_. So don't... draw them up here."

"They're going to eat everyone down in those cars." Jennifer said, fiercely.

"I know, but - "

"Don't you think that maybe we have to protect more than just  _us_?!" Jennifer demanded, waving at the sea of cars, and their trapped fellow humans. "They're going to get  _eaten_! If we have the ability to kill the zombies, so that they don't get eaten, don't you think that maybe we should be doing that?!"

"But what if we try, and then they just turn around and eat us, because we have nothing to protect ourselves with, after?" Emma protested. "You only have twenty five arrows! I only have a hundred and twenty five bullets! You promised me that you weren't going to leave me  _alone_  to face the end of the world, Jennifer! You _promised_  that I wouldn't be alone! You can't - you can't just - I can't just... you can't leave me because we  _ran out of ammo_." She reached up to wipe at her eyes, startled to find them watering. "This isn't like the movies. We aren't going to have... we aren't going to have unlimited bullets and everything. We're just going to be... dead. Sitting in the water, waiting for someone to just... pick us off. It's not... it's not _fair_..."

"Okay." Jennifer said, reaching over to cup her jaw, frowning slightly as she pressed her forehead to Emma's, and said, softly, "Look at me. We have to figure this out. We have to  _try_  and save them though, okay?"

"Yeah," she whispered, nodding, closing her eyes for a moment. Emma really wanted this to be over already, planning for a zombie apocalypse had been much more fun when it was an abstract idea and not a genuine possibility, when it was something that could happen and not a guarantee that it  _was_  going to happen. She wasn't actually looking forward to this, despite all of the days that she had laughed about it, with her friends. It was much more fun in theory. "Yeah, I know, we need to save them..."

"But you don't want to save them at the expense of us, huh?" Jennifer said, quietly, still smiling, their brows still pressed together.

"Yeah," she admitted, quietly, sighing softly. It made her frustrated, how easily she seemed to fall apart, lately, how easily she tumbled into panic attacks and freak outs. It wasn't something she was proud of in the slightest, and if her father knew... god, if her father knew, he would tune her in  _so_  much, because that was exactly the sort of thing that someone that was going to take on the end of the world was _not_  allowed to do, it made them seem weak, and as her father had drilled into her head since childhood, she was  _not_  weak. She had to do this. She  _could_ , too, and the serious look in Jennifer's eyes was enough for her to take another deep breath, and say, "Maybe we could start a fire, or something, to stop them?"

"Fire?" Jennifer rocked back on her heels, frowning slightly as she considered that. "We could, but we're up high..."

"This is going to sound like utter bullshit, because I mean... this is straight out of every movie ever, but... can you shoot flaming arrows?" Emma asked, leaning on the short half wall that ran around the edge of the roof, looking up at Jennifer.

The other arched a brow, then shook her head, laughing. "Yes, technically, though usually there are special arrows for that..."

"Okay, but I mean... that's not going to make it impossible for you to do, is it? It's not going to unbalance it, or something...?"

"It would, but so long as you don't want me to aim  _too_  far away, then I think I can." Jennifer smirked.

"Good." Emma shifted up onto her knees again, and looked over the edge, over the parking lot. She could see the zombies approaching, they were getting much closer, now, so she frowned, considering that for a moment, then pointed at the way that the parking lot was formed. "See the narrow mouth, there, where the little... walls, whatever the point of those stupid things are? See where it's narrow... they're going to have to come in there, aren't they?"

Jennifer frowned, but nodded, finally. "Into the parking lot, yeah. Not sure I can hit _quite_  that far, not with a flaming arrow, though."

"You don't have to. I have a different idea. See how the whole parking lot slants down towards it?"

"For rain drain off, right?"

"Exactly," She nodded, and shifted up slightly, so that her elbows were resting on the half wall, and shifted down so that she could sight along the line of her sawed off, wishing that it was a proper rifle, but at least there was going to be some brute power. "All right... hopefully no one is an idiot when I start doing this, or they're going to be screwed..."

"What are you doing?" Jennifer frowned, watching her.

"Guess we're going to bringing them to us, by letting them know we're here,” she shrugged, primed her gun, and fired.

The car that she had shot jumped slightly at the impact, bouncing on its tires, and she watched with a bit of a grin grim when liquid started pouring out from under the vehicle. It had been one of the unoccupied cars, but a lot of the others in the same general area had people in them that were looking around, alarmed, clearly trying to figure out what was going on, and she frowned, considering the other cars. "I'm just going to have to shoot one that someone's in, there's really nothing for it... I need to get more gasoline, if we want to start a fire big enough to drive them back..."

"And you don't think you're just going to light the  _cars_  on fire?" Jennifer protested, eyes wide.

"...you're a  _mechanic_ , Jennifer." Emma blinked at her. "I would have thought you'd know how impossible that actually is, unlike every, you know, Hollywood movie ever, that seems to think that you can just shoot a gas tank and get  _boom_  huge fucking fireballs. I mean, if Hollywood got its way, there would just be like... bicycles bursting into flames everywhere. Everything is seriously flammable in their world."

"I know I'm a mechanic." She said, glowering at her for a moment, a brief moment, then shook her head. "Which is why I know how flammable it is, and how careful you have to be..."

"Well, it's all right. Promise." She grinned, and mischievously crossed her index fingers over her heart. "Cross my heart, even. You need incendiary rounds to light a gas tank on fire, and I don't happen to have any of them. Shame, we could _totally_  use some."

"That was on Mythbusters!" Matthew called, from where he was still settled on top of the heating unit, and they both twisted to look up at him for a moment.

"...so it was," Emma agreed, smirking crookedly. "But I also used to shoot my father's car when I got mad at him. That's how I learned how to punch gas tanks, to make a mess of gas. He never forgave me."

"...I wouldn't either." Jennifer said, blinking at her. "You know how much effort it is to  _properly_  replace a gas tank?"

"Enough effort for me to really,  _really_  nicely ask my very favourite mechanic to do it for me?" She asked, sweetly, playfully fluttering her eyelashes at her for a moment, then glancing back at the parking lot. "All right, they're just walking, but they're walking fast. We need to get to work. All right, all you idiots in your cars... stay where you are, I'm shooting at your gas tanks, not you."

She positioned herself again, frowning slightly, and started firing again. One by one, a whole row of cars bounced with every hit, multiple large holes punched in the sides of the body panels as she aimed where the gas tanks were typically stored, relieved that they had chosen to get themselves mired in the most ridiculous positions, when they had panicked and crashed into each other. Fortunately, they were really quite close to the building, which helped her lack of range with this gun, but it also helped her to have them all neatly lined up. She only had to hit one car twice, because of course it was a foreign model with the gas tank in an awkward and different place, but a laughing Jennifer, who was still wrapping a rag around the shaft of one of her arrows, so that she could light it on fire, helpfully pointed out where to hit the car to actually hit it, on that model.

At last, Emma declared that she had hit enough cars, and that the gas was flowing well enough, and it was slowly slipping down between the cars, under their tires, and fortunately no one had yet been stupid enough to get out of their cars.

But a moment later, it was going to happen...

"They're going to have to run, in a minute," she said, digging around in her backpack for a moment to tug out a lighter, and smiled at Jennifer. "Think they're smart enough to run once we light this place up?"

"They better be, or we're going to be serving the zombies  _cooked_  people." Jennifer sighed, and stood up, drawing the string and the arrow back, frowning slightly. "All right. Light me up."

"I thought I always lit up your life," she grinned, standing herself so that she could flick the zippo into flame.

Jennifer smirked, and said, "When we get out of here, I'm going to kiss you senseless, and there's nothing that Tom or Matthew can do to stop me."

"I'm going to go with neither of them would ever want to  _stop_  you from doing that," she smirked slightly, and touched the lighter to the rag, making sure that it was actually lit, and that it wasn’t just going to go out the moment it flew through the air. They couldn't really afford to have to try to do this more than once.

Grinning slightly, she shifted her shoulders slightly, then fired.

The arrow flew through the air, and  _yes_ , it blazed powerfully through the air, still flaming, and slammed into the concrete. Naturally, the concrete was harder than the arrow, and it didn't stick into the ground like it might have in some fantastic movie, but it just sort of toppled onto its side - right into the puddle of gasoline that was still spreading slowly across the parking lot, moving towards the entrance of the parking lot, where the zombies were already starting to enter, carried by gravity.

The fire caught, instantly, and suddenly there were flames skittering across the parking lot like it was magic, spreading further and faster with every second, until it skimmed under cars and towards the entrance.

"Oh shit..." she breathed, eyes wide. "That is a thing of beauty."

"That is going to start cars on fire." Jennifer said, though she rested her one hand on her hip, holding her bow carefully in the other hand, watching as the flames started to spread faster and faster.

"And apparently the sheep have noticed." She grinned, relieved as people started to tumble out of their cars, looking sort of panicked and horrified, and waved her arms. "Everyone  _get inside_! Get inside and close and barricade the doors, you get it?! Get inside the building! Close all of the doors!"

There were people gaping up at them, sort of wide eyed and confused looking, and she shook her head. "Seriously, I didn't think it was that hard of a concept."

"I'm not sure if is, I think they're freaking out." Jennifer muttered, and hollered, "Get inside! Get in where it's  _safe_!"

"Or we start shooting!" She added, and didn't even manage to look apologetic when Jennifer gave her a sharp look. "Oh come on, you totally saved the day, earlier, by being badass and threatening to shoot people. I can totally be badass and threaten to shoot people too."

"...you're threatening to shoot people if they don't go inside to avoid the flames  _we_ started when we lit their cars on fire, to stop the zombies that are marching towards them." She said, slowly.

"And we're talking too much, really, if we're supposed to be killing all of the zombies, maybe we ought to be getting on that, hm?" Emma grinned at her, and shouted, "All right, you idiots, unless you want to be BBQ, get inside the fucking building!"

People  _finally_  started to move, but they all seemed to be gathering up things, trying to carry their purchases with them as they scrambled into the building, and she shook her head as she watched them, occasionally flicking her eyes to the still spreading fire. "What the hell are they thinking? Like... you know that the zombies are  _right fucking there_ , and you focus on your shitty purchases? Money isn't going to matter anymore, it's not like this is what the world is becoming, they have to realize that this is idiotic, their lives are worth more than whatever shit it is they've bought..."

"Uh... guys?" Matthew called, and Emma glanced back at him.

"What?" She demanded.

"...the zombies aren't stopping."

She frowned, and turned back to the entrance of the parking lot, where the zombies had been entering before. The fire had finally spread right to the entrance, and it completely blocked it off, now, though of course there  _were_  other entrances, this one was the one that the zombies were at, so it had seemed the most sense to try and block off this one.

The problem was that even though there was fire, and it was spreading further and further, and there were even whole cars on fire now - and thank god, people seemed to be actually finally disappearing inside, instead of sitting in their cars like idiots that wanted to protect their property, or something, and getting roasted inside, the zombies themselves really  _didn't_  seem to be stopping. They were skirting the flames, yes, but the flames didn't actually seem to be  _stopping_  them, they were moving past them, working their way towards the building, with a steady purpose.

"They know what they're doing." She said, frowning as she considered the small crowd. Perhaps a dozen, maybe as many as twenty of them, all of them seeming to work together, walking as though it was simple, as though it was almost commonplace.

Every single one of the zombies was blood soaked, it was all over their faces and hands, all down the front of their shirts, and Emma shuddered, despite herself, considering that. That meant that they had fed, and apparently fed quite well, from the amount of blood on their shirts and hands. They had already fed, but they weren't  _stopping_. That seemed to speak to her of the Dawn of the Dead types, desperate and without stop, or perhaps the Silent Hill type, that never seemed to be sated. But maybe these weren't really like either of them, because so far, she hadn't actually noticed a trend of the victims being found without their  _brains_ , these zombies seemed content, frankly, to eat  whatever part of a human they could get their hands on, simple as that. Creepy as all hell, she thought, swallowing.

"They don't look like the undead," Jennifer said, quietly, watching them moving closer.

"No," she agreed, quietly. "They don't."

"But they're still zombies, right?" She asked, as she tugged another arrow out of her quicker, knocking it to the string, and getting ready to fire if she had to. Yeah, maybe Jennifer wanted to save the people inside the building, but she was smart, she also didn't want to just lie down and die. Emma really respected that in her.

"Well, I don't really know any other reason why a bunch of people might suddenly start getting a taste for human flesh, do you?"

"Donner party?" Jennifer smirked, and pulled back the string.

"Don't your arms get tired, doing that?" Emma asked, shifting to the edge of the roof again, and quickly checked on her gun's current state of loaded.

"No, it's a compound. The fly wheel's are designed in such a way that once you pull the draw back, you could probably hold it for hours, and except for your arm getting sore, there would be nothing stopping you. It barely takes any effort to _keep_  the string drawn back, it's just that it takes an awful lot of force to pull it back."

"Ah." She murmured, and called up to Matthew, "Make sure that you keep an eye on the ladder, you got it?"

"Yeah!" He called back, and his voice broke slightly, but she chose to ignore that in favor of watching the swarm below them. The zombies really  _weren't_  all that dissuaded by the fire, which made it sort of frustrating that she had wasted so much ammo shooting out the gas tanks of those cars, but at least, she supposed, the fire had been enough impetus to get the idiots that were sitting like sardines in their cans of cars back into the building, where at least they could probably fortify the doors, or maybe the doors of one of the stores, find themselves in some place where they should be able to keep themselves protected. It wasn't much, because really, if Emma were in their situation, she would be bolting out of the back doors of the mall, trying to put as much space as possible between herself and the swarm of zombies that were marching towards the building, but that was just her, she supposed. Either way, they were much safer  _inside_  the building than they were outside, in their cars.

And then the zombies defied what she had been thinking, and split suddenly into three groups.

"What are they doing?" Emma asked, leaning over the edge of the roof, looking down at them. About a third of them were just standing in front of the main doors of the mall, seeming to be staring at nothing, as though they weren't really seeing anything. They were making little sound, just a few indiscriminate grunting and growling sounds, but that was it, and otherwise, they just stood there like they were protestors, or something, and not actually blood soaked maniac zombies.

The other two groups had split off in two different directions, and as they watched, seemed to be skirting the building.

Jennifer jogged in one direction to watch them go, as they moved to the north, and Emma darted the other direction, to the south, to watch them walk around the building. The zombies walked to the other doors of the mall, then stilled, exactly as the ones in the front were. It was sort of eerie, to see them standing there, staring into the mall as though they were waiting for some kind of invisible signal to tell them to move, to tell them what to do.

Emma tugged her phone out of her pocket, frowning as she flicked her finger on the screen, dialing Jennifer's number.

A moment later, the other's voice answered, "Hey."

Twisting so that she could look down the length of the mall, relieved that this was a small enough mall that even on the other side, she could see the other woman, Emma asked, "What is going on? What are they doing at your entrance?"

"Nothing." Jennifer said, and she sounded as confused as Emma felt. "They're just... standing there."

"Yeah, here too. They're just - oh my god!"

"They're attacking!" Jennifer cried. "They're busting through the doors!"

"Yeah, here too!" She called into her phone, clutching it tightly in her left hand as she lifted the gun in her right, ready to start firing if she needed to. But the thing was, the zombies didn't seem to either be aware of the roof of the mall and the people that were up there - or they just didn't care. They were tearing the doors open, though, ripping them apart, and with a jolt, Emma suddenly gasped into the phone, "It's a coordinated attack. They planned it. They figured out that if they all went at the same time, they're... they're going to have people panicking and running for the other door, and they'll just be running into them... oh god, Jennifer, they're  _smart_. They're not just dead, they're  _smart_ , they're  _thinking_..."

"I know, I know, I - get back here. I need you. Come here."

Emma didn't need to be told twice.

At once, she shoved her phone back in her pocket, and started to run, full tilt, across the asphalt roof, clutching her beloved gun closer to her chest as she dashed towards the other woman, desperately trying to get to her, needing the comfort of being there with her, needing the other's back up.

She had read once, that the reason that the Spartan soldiers were such good warriors was that basically they were all paired off, into same sex pairs. They still got married, they still had children, they still did all the things that they were expected to do, but they also had a lover, in their barracks, a man that they lived and loved and trained with - and when in battle, a man that they fought beside. Historians believe, it was told to her in one of her University classes, that they believed that the Spartan warriors would fight harder and stronger if they feared that their lovers were in danger, because while it was important to save a comrade in arms, when that comrade in arms was also a man that shared your bed every night, it was even more important. It came down to love.

She didn't really consider herself a Spartan, but maybe Jennifer was her fellow warrior, and in battle, she would do anything to keep her safe.

Emma nearly skidded on the pebbly asphalt as she dashed to Jennifer's side, and caught the other girl's arm, panting slightly. "Are - is it okay?"

"I'm fine, but we need to do something." She said, nodding at the door, where Emma could see, leaning over the edge of the roof, that the zombies had actually torn the doors open, and were piling inside. "We have to get out of here. Now. Before they figure out we're up here."

"Yeah," Emma murmured, quietly. "Looks like instead of saving the people, we somehow created a... all you can eat buffet."

"Yeah," Jennifer whispered, quietly, embarrassed, and clearly frustrated by this. After all, she had been the one that had wanted to save the people, that had wanted to prevent it from just being a massacre of the people, and somehow, in her attempt to save them, they had actually handed the people over to the zombies. The look on Jennifer's face clearly said that she genuinely didn't think she was going to make it past this unscarred. "I think we really need to get out of here. Just in case."

"Right." Emma nodded, frowning slightly. "But we have to wait til Tom gets here, or else we're running out into the parking lot, where the zombies are just going to come eat us too..."

"Tow truck, tow truck, tow truck!" Matthew screamed, and she turned to see him bolting up off of the heating unit, standing up as he waved at the parking lot, sort of desperately, trying to get the driver to drive towards their location, to come towards them. "Tow truck!"

"All right, get down here, you idiot, before you tell every zombie in the city that we're here," Emma snapped, reloading her gun.

"Right." He scrambled down off of the heating unit, clumsily, and looked out at the tow truck as it approached. Tom had apparently seen Matthew on top of the unit, waving his arms about like an idiot, and was coming as close as he could, but clearly, he didn't want to get too close to either the flames - which were still burning heartily, and had now taken over several cars - or the zombies, that had now broken through the door and were now, presuming the screams of agony coming from inside were correct, eating everyone still living. "How do we get down?" He demanded, voice cracking.

"Ladder, probably," she frowned, and ran along the wall, hauling her backpack along and tossing it on as she ran. "Tom!" She called, waving at him. "Can you get on the other side, to the ladder?"

The driver's door of the tow truck rolled down, and Tom leaned out, frowning slightly. He looked rumpled and sort of wild-eyed, but competent enough to do some driving, anyway. "Not likely, there's a big fucking fire, in case you didn't notice? What happened? Zombies lit some flames, now?"

"No, that was us," Jennifer called down to him. "Well, get closer, at least, this is a bit high to drop off of!"

"We're going to have to do it anyway," Emma said, frowning as she considered the distance. Just a little over an average one story... wished there was some dirt or something to drop onto, it would be a whole lot less painful than dropping down onto concrete. "Okay, this is going to hurt. I'll go first."

"Are you insane?" Jennifer grabbed her arm, eyes wide. "You're going to break all of your bones!"

"Yeah, I might, but I'm not going to wait up here for them to eat us, and I'm not running around this building for them to see me as fast food," she shrugged, and handed her backpack and sawed off to Jennifer. "I need you to hold onto these for a minute, when I'm down there, I'm going to get you to toss these and your bow and your arrows and anything else you need, down, okay? And then we're going to go. Ready?"

"No," She said, fiercely, and grabbed Emma by the back of her hair, jerking her closer in a move that was downright almost violent, crushing their mouths together. It was sort of awkward, noses bumping together, and their teeth clacking against each other, through their lips, which sort of hurt and stung, but then a moment later, Jennifer pulled away from her, eyes too bright to just be because of the smoke from the gasoline fire getting in her eyes, and nodded, quickly. "Okay, now I'm ready. Don't break yourself."

"I'll try," she grinned, sheepishly, and shifted to the edge of the roof.

Clambering up onto the edge of the roof, Emma braced herself for a moment, then took a deep breath, and jumped.

She bent her knees, as she flew through the air, and made sure that the moment she landed on her feet, she rolled forward, curling herself into an odd sort of summersault as she did, to cushion the blow, then scrambled up to her feet. She had road rash on her hands and her knees and her left leg was absolutely screaming in agony, but she was able to put weight on it, so it couldn’t be broken, so at least that was a start. She hobbled forward a few steps, then held up her arms. "All right! Toss them down!"

Jennifer didn't hesitate, she threw the backpack first, which Emma tugged on, then the gun, which would have probably been a terribly dangerous endeavour, seeing as it was throwing a  _gun_  at someone, which was never a good fucking idea, but Emma had unloaded it before she jumped, and besides, like she'd said before, the distances wasn't  _too_  great. Not good, for jumping, but for survival, clearly.

For the bow, she darted forward, so that she could stand directly below Jennifer and let the other drop it into her arms, and then the quiver came next. The case was a bit more difficult to maneuver, and they ended up having Jennifer precariously lower it until Emma could just touch the bottom corner of it, then let it drop, so that she was able to catch it, and toss it in the back of the tow truck.

"All right, Jennifer, you need to jump!" She called up to her, glancing at the door, wanting to make sure that the zombies hadn't yet managed to get through the people indoors and start wandering outside to where there was noise, wanting to see what was going on.

"Matthew first!" Jennifer said, waving at her from above, long dark hair hanging around her like a curtain. "Okay? I think I need to help him."

"Okay, but just...  _hurry_!" Emma called.

Jennifer nodded, and leaned back, and a moment later, her boss appeared on the edge of the roof, looking pale as he spluttered and embarrassingly asked why he couldn't just run to the ladder, or something, or...

"Matthew Gray Gubler!" Emma howled up at him, firmly. "Look at me. You have dealt with the biggest assholes our store has ever seen, and you have always come out smelling like fucking daisies. So you are going to grow a pair of balls, and you are going to  _jump off of that roof_ , do you hear me?"

He whimpered.

Emma sighed, hands on her hips, then looked over so that her eyes met the other woman's, and grinned. "Push him."

"What?!" Matthew squawked, looking at Jennifer like he really thought that she was going to push him, and yelped, "I'll jump, I'll jump!" before he all but flew off of the roof on his own violation. He didn't land quite as neatly as she had, and sort of ended up landing crouched, instead, tumbling forward to land on his face a moment later. He lay there for a moment, long enough that she wondered if he had seriously hurt himself, but then Matthew sort of awkwardly pulled himself up, forehead bleeding. "I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay... I'm still alive..."

"Well, that's a start." She sighed, relieved. "Get in the passenger seat, so you'll be ready to go as soon as Jennifer - "

Jennifer suddenly hit the concrete just a few inches to her left, and threw out her arms to steady herself, so that she didn't even summersault or tumble the way that they had, and straightened a moment later, stepping closer to Emma to kiss her again, firmly, and then tug the bow and quiver away from her. "Thanks, babe, for taking care of these. How about we sit in the back so we can shoot at any zombies that think that they can come attack us?"

"...sure, sounds awesome," she grinned, and followed her, limping towards the truck to climb carefully onto the back. That girl was  _bad ass_.

"How bad did you hurt your leg?" Jennifer frowned, tugging her up onto the back of the truck, carefully.

"I dunno, it's not broken, I can put pressure on it," Emma shrugged.

"Just because you can  _currently_  put pressure on it does not mean that it's not broken, Emma," the other sighed, letting out a huff of breath. "There is such a thing as  _shock_ , and the human body tends to suppress the pain of broken bones long enough for the person to get away from danger, it's an evolutionary thing, caused by - "

"If you ladies are done with your tea social back there, is it safe to start getting the fuck away from here?!" Tom demanded, leaning out of the driver's side window.

"...rude," Emma muttered, smirking slightly, then bolted up. "Yes! But you have to stop by my car! I need my other guns and my ammo! It's just by the entrance, it's the - "

"Yeah, I know the one, Jennifer had it for a fucking week," he rolled his eyes, and leaned back in the cab. The whole truck lurched for a moment, smelling powerfully of gasoline and fumes, then it started roaring through the parking lot, actually driving over puddles of flames in a few spots, if the flames were low enough that they could safely drive over them with no damage to the tires or the vehicle, and skidded around the crashed up flaming cars, probably a little too fast, considering there were two people sitting on the back of the truck, clinging to the winch to keep from getting thrown off, but a moment later, he skidded the truck next to Emma's little car.

Emma moved to slide off of the back, but Jennifer reached forward, catching her arm. "Let me," she said, holding out her hand for the keys. "Stay off that leg as much as possible. Just in case, okay?"

"...okay," she conceded, finally, and handed over the keys.

"Be right back." Jennifer darted off of the back of the truck, darting over to the car, unlocking the back door. It seemed to take forever, and the longer they had to wait, out here in the open like this, the more convinced Emma started to feel that something was going to come and eat them, just snake them and get them, but a few minutes later, Jennifer darted over with the guns, and her own duffle bag that she had grabbed from her apartment, earlier.

"Here," she thrust them onto the back of the truck, darting up beside them. "Go, Tom, go!"

He apparently didn't need to be told twice, and screeched out of the parking lot.

"Text him, tell him we need to go to the sports goods store," Emma glanced at Jennifer, grabbing at the winch again when the truck bounced slightly. "Ouch. And then... do you think my house is still safe?"

"I don't know," she admitted, frowning. "At least there are the motion detectors, if anyone tries to get in..."

"Yeah," Emma leaned back against the winch. "Text him."

 

+++

 

The sports store, to their infinite relief, had been empty of zombies. And, actually, a lot of other things, as well.

Jennifer had sort of expected that they would need to break in the windows, or something, that if the employees were sensible, obviously they must have locked the place up, to prevent the swarms of flesh eating zombies from breaking in. The problem was, apparently zombies hadn't actually been the concern, there, because the windows were already smashed in, and there was the traces of _human_  ravaging everywhere. Exercise machines, expensive video games, expensive sports gear, it had all been hauled away. Many of the guns were missing, but when Jennifer had smashed open the ammo case, she'd been relieved to find that most of the idiots that had raided the gun cases, presumably planning on shooting their way out of the apocalypse, had grabbed either the wrong kind, or no ammo at all.

Emma had been left out on the truck with the guns to fend off anyone that came near - and now apparently they had to watch out for human invaders, as well as no longer human ones - and had directed Jennifer, via cell phone, which bullets to get, and how many of each.

Fortunately, no one had really thought to grab the archery equipment, and she grabbed a restringing kit along with new strings and as many arrows as she could fit in her cart, because quite frankly, if it was the end of the world, then she was a) not going to feel bad about robbing from a store that had already been robbed from, and b) she was going to get everything she possibly could. There was no point in robbing a place only to rob it for a few piddly little things. You had to make looting worth your while, and no, she reminded the boys firmly, as she had them haul the things she'd sent them to find out to the truck, looting televisions was not going to be fucking worth their time.

Fortunately, though, this place had small sports trailers, the pull along kind, not tent trailers unfortunately, but they were designed for tossing things into for sports trips, hunting, that sort of thing. They were able to fill one chock full with the tents, propane tanks, cooking stoves, arrows, everything that they were going to need, just in case they couldn't get somewhere safer, for now, at least they should be able to keep themselves alive. It was a start, anyway.

They attached it to the back of the truck, then clambered aboard again, and took off, trying to work their way back to Emma's house.

Emma's house, fortunately, had  _not_  been overridden by zombies, and they were able to make it a little safer, which was going to be a relief at least. Emma had apologized that there was only one spare bedroom, so the boys either got to fight over it, or they had to share.

Her leg, though, had gotten worse.

Carrying a tray upstairs, Jennifer leaned into Emma's bedroom, and smiled cheerfully at her, hopefully. "Hey. How are you feeling?"

"...sore," Emma muttered, shifting slightly on the bed. Her leg was now splinted up, tightly, and she reached for the tray, hopefully, with grabby fingers. "What did you make me? Delicious food?"

"Very." She smirked, and sat on the edge of the bed, holding the tray in her lap, still. "Microwaved soup."

"...well, that's... something." She blinked, and leaned over to peer at it.

"I promise," Jennifer laughed softly, "I'm not trying to kill you with my poor cooking, so... you're just going to have to enjoy my microwaved soup, all right?"

Emma snorted, and relaxed back into her pillows. "Fine, but you have to feed me."

"Sure," she agreed, and picked up the spoon, scooping up a load of the vegetable soup. Leaning forward, she carefully offered it to Emma, grinning as the other had to sort of sit up to slurp it up, and still managed to dump some of it down her front. Of course, that made Emma shriek, but at least the soup wasn't actually all that  _hot_  anymore, and was just sort of lukewarm, so at least she wasn't going to be burned. All the same, Jennifer carefully dabbed the soup, up, with a napkin, grinning.

"You did that on purpose," Emma muttered, petulantly. "So that you could grope my boobs."

"Do I actually have to spill soup on you to grope your boobs?" Jennifer laughed, setting the napkin aside, and shifting closer so that she could go back to feeding her - hopefully without spilling down her shirt this time. "Well, that seems to be a bit of a shame, really."

"Well... it seemed awfully suspicious." She said, loftily.

"Yes, I suppose it must," Jennifer grinned, calmly feeding the other girl the lukewarm vegetable soup. "After all, I'm also the one that took off your jeans so that I could splint up your broken leg. I must have just really secretly wanted to get you naked."

"Well, you failed, if you were actually trying that, because I  _happen_  to be wearing underwear," Emma shot back.

"Yeah, I noticed. Smarty Pants."

"Well, they're my favourite underwear," Emma grinned back at her, then obligingly opened her mouth for another spoonful of soup. "Mm. How are the boys doing?"

"Matthew has completely fallen apart," she admitted, considering that. He had been sitting on the corner of the couch the last time she had seen him, his eyes on the television screen and the same scrolling message that had now been playing for about eight hours, not moving. "And Tom... is sharpening all of the axes we picked up at the store. I guess he thinks he's going to hack and chop his way through the zombies."

"Well, at least he's  _doing_  something," Emma murmured, quietly, and opened her mouth, hopefully.

Jennifer shook her head, and fed her another spoonful. "Have you tried calling your dad again, or anything?"

"Yeah. No answer. He's probably fortifying the place." She shrugged. "How'd your calls go?"

"Got a hold of my best friend, he says they're still okay, up in Washington, at the moment, but that he's basically hiding in the basement with his girlfriend and hoping to all hell that no one tries to get into his house. And I couldn't get a hold of my parents, but I  _did_  get a hold of my ex."

"Oh." Emma considered that, for a moment. "And what did he say?"

Jennifer smiled crookedly. Well, it was about time this whole thing came out, anyways, especially considering everything else that was going on. " _She_  said that things have really gone haywire down there, almost no one has power, but there doesn't seem to be any flesh eaters, so at least that's a small blessing."

"Oh. Well. That's good." The blond was silent for a moment, then shifted slightly on the bed, twisting so that she was facing Jennifer properly. "...so you're... a lesbian, then?"

"Mm," she nodded, spooning up another serving of the soup, and offering it. She was actually relieved when Emma opened her mouth for it.

"You never mentioned," Emma said, and it sounded mild, but to come to think of it, maybe it  _was_  mild, Emma had always been pretty laid back... "I mean, not that you  _have_  to, but I sort of figured, you know... all things considered..."

"Are 'all things' to be considered the fact that we have now extensively made out?" She asked, looking up.

Emma cleared her throat. "...they might have had something to do with it."

"I sort of figured, when you started kissing me, and I didn't resist or anything, that it was probably pretty clear that I was into chicks. I mean, most chicks don't make out with other girls unless they're into them."

"Well, I'm not really into chicks." Emma said, shrugging slightly.

Jennifer arched a brow, and smirked slightly as she spooned up more of the soup, offering it to the other. Watching her eat for a moment, she finally said, "You know, I don't believe a word of that. I really don't. See... you kissed  _me_  first, and even if you hadn't you were really,  _really_  into it. So... yeah. I'm not sure I believe you. Actually, I'm absolutely sure that I don't believe you. I call bullshit on that."

"I'm really actually  _not_  into girls," Emma laughed. "I've only ever dated guys!"

"And somehow the fact that you've never actually dated girls means that you're automatically not into them?" She arched a brow.

"Well... no..." Emma spluttered slightly, embarrassed, flushed. "Shut up, and feed me soup, this is too complicated to think about."

"It's too complicated to think about?" She arched a brow, again, leaning closer to her, letting her hand rest quietly on the other's thigh, stroking her skin, gently. "It's too complicated, in the midst of the apocalypse, to think about whether or not you'd find another girl sexually attractive, about whether or not you would want someone who was an absolute expert in the female body because she, too, knows perfectly how it works, to make you feel the most pleasure you've ever felt in your life? To have someone who knows exactly how to make your engine rev get you going? Men don't know what to do, Emma, trust me, don't you think you'd rather have an expert eat you out, make your toes curl, make you orgasm so hard you can feel it in the roots of your hair?"

She swallowed heavily, biting her lower lip.

Jennifer let her fingers slide further up the other's thigh, skimming over her skin as she did, and whispered, "I want to see your face when you come, Emma, I want to make you  _scream_ , I want to fuck you with my tongue until you just can't take any more pleasure, and then kiss you til you can't see straight. Because I think, very strongly, from the way that you kissed me, I don't think you  _are_  seeing straight."

Emma laughed, breathlessly, eyes dark, still biting her lip. "Well, that's certainly..."

"Certainly?" She purred, slipping her fingers a little further up, brushing the tips over the other's underwear.

"...I can't exactly remember what word I was going for, there," Emma breathed.

"Mmm, really?" Jennifer grinned, letting her fingers explore, gently, through the panties themselves. She didn't want to push too hard, she didn't want to scare her away, but if Jennifer was honest with herself, she was very eager for this.  _Very_ eager. And yes, part of that was that Emma was attractive and she wanted to have sex with her, because who wouldn't want to have sex with someone that they were attracted to? But it was also partially because she wanted to reassure herself that she was  _alive_. There were monsters out there, eating people, destroying the world that she had known for her entire life, taking everything that had made sense for twenty-five years and tearing it into little shreds. Emma was still alive,  _she_  was still alive, they'd nearly gotten eaten, earlier, they had dropped off of the roof and nearly gotten broken, there - Emma  _had_  gotten broken, but at least she was only broken, not shattered - and she wanted to  _celebrate_  that. Jennifer wanted to enjoy being alive, and wanted to be  _with_  her.

And Emma was clever, and funny, and... she would have been pleased to stay with her here, frankly, for a long time. She'd always been big on relationships, she'd been in her last one for nearly ten years. Jennifer was good at commitment.

Had the world not been ending, she probably would have done this right. She probably would have asked her out for drinks again, or maybe to a movie, out for coffees, done the proper dating thing, kiss her gently on maybe their fifth date or so, once she had made sure that Emma was open to the idea, and actually interested in her. She hadn't been  _seeking_  a girlfriend, but frankly, if she had to have one, Emma would have been her choice.

But the world  _was_  ending, and if they had to face an apocalypse, she would much rather face it  _with_  her than on their own, because Emma really got her engines going, she did. She wanted to  _enjoy_  whatever little bit of life was left.

So yeah, she pressed gently, gauging the other's expression as she did.

Emma bucked slightly, gasping softly.

"Is this okay?" Jennifer asked, quietly, not wanting to push until she knew that the other was actually all right with it.

"I'd be more okay with it if the food wasn't still on the bed," Emma admitted, panting softly. "Because I don't want to move for fear that I'm going to knock it everywhere, and there's going to be soup in awkward places..."

Laughing, she let her forehead rest on the other girl's shoulder for a moment, then shifted, and picked up the tray, moving it aside. Setting it on the bedside table, she made sure it was out of the way, then glanced back at Emma again, grinning slightly. "That any better?"

"That's a lot better," Emma licked her lips, and held out her hands. "All right, get over here, I, ah... I kind of want to figure out if I'm into girls or not."

"Mm... and how, exactly," she grinned, crawling closer to her, crawling over her leg, so that she straddled the thigh of the leg that had  _not_  been broken. Settling herself down, she licked her lips, looking down at Emma. "Exactly, do you want me to help with that, Emma Stone?"

She wiggled slightly. "Well... you had some ideas, earlier..."

"Oh yeah, I did have a few," she grinned, leaning closer to her, kissing her throat, gently. Kissing her way up her neck, she kissed her jaw, now, and murmured, "Did you have any one of those in particular that sounded good?"

Emma shuddered. "Well, there was some mention about... women knowing other women's bodies perfectly..."

"Mmmh, this is true." She agreed, and let her fingers trail up the inside of the other's arms. "I do know lots of places that you might like someone touching... what do you think?"

"I think we need to stop talking about this, and get to  _doing_  this."

Jennifer laughed, and kissed the soft underside of the other's jaw, sweetly. "You still haven't told me what exactly you were hoping for, Emma..."

"Oh god, stop teasing me," she groaned, tangling her fingers in Jennifer's hair, holding her closer.

"Mmm, I could do that," she murmured, and shifted back slightly, ginning at her. "Let's get that soupy shirt off of you, then."

"God, please." Emma shifted, though she couldn't really sit up properly, not with Jennifer sitting on her leg, but she still managed to tug off her own t-shirt, tossing it aside. Licking her lips, she looked up at her, hopefully.

"Hey, look at you, beautiful," Jennifer murmured, sliding her hands up the other's stomach, just sort of wanting to explore everything. Emma was gorgeous, she really was - completely different from her ex-girlfriend, smooth and pale in every way that she had been curvy and dark -  but she was absolutely gorgeous and lovely, and god, she wanted to explore everything. Skimming her fingers up, she grinned at Emma as she cupped her breasts, and said, "Mmm, this would probably be a little nicer without a bra, too. Just... so you know."

"You're sort of demanding, you know that?" Emma grinned, but she shifted carefully, and reached behind her to undo her bra.

It dropped into Jennifer's hands, and she grinned, pulling it away, and tossing it in the general direction of the bathroom. Yeah, she was right, Emma's breasts were little and perky and fucking  _perfect_ , and she cupped them again, squeezing gently, and grinning up at her. "Well, these are  _definitely_  nice."

"Yeah, okay, I got it," she laughed, grinning at her. Emma was flushed, clearly embarrassed - but not so embarrassed that she wanted to stop. "Now, how about we get going, because I know this can be - oooh!"

Jennifer dipped her head, and sucked one of her nipples into her mouth, worrying at it, gently, scraping her bottom teeth deliberately along the nipple, which was hard and stiff, definitely interested. No hesitation, there, and the more she suckled and nibbled, the harder Emma started to breathe, and the tighter her fingers tangled in her hair. Pleased with the way that Emma's hips kept shifting, she lifted her head, licking her lips as she released her nipple with a wet  _pop_ , sitting back. "Starting to get where I'm going with this, now?"

"Oh yeah," Emma grinned, looking absolutely breathless, and though her cheeks were flushed, it seemed to be with a very  _very_  nice sort of glow, so Jennifer certainly wasn't going to complain about that. "But I think this is slightly unfair."

"Unfair?" She laughed at the idea.

"Well, I'm practically naked, and you are still fully dressed. In a sweater. And jeans. All  _I_  have on is my underwear. That doesn't seem fair."

"I thought you weren't attracted to girls." She teased, licking her lips. "Thought it might be easier for you if you didn't have to be looking at someone that was absolutely definitely female."

"Screw it, I take it back, get naked,  _please_ ," Emma begged.

"Mmm, well, since you asked so nicely." Jennifer grinned, and leaned back to tug her shirt over her head, tossing it aside.

"Oh... I like where this is going," Emma breathed, and reached up.

Jennifer was more than content to sit back and let the other explore. While she really  _did_  think that Emma had been sort of covering her attraction with bluster and denial, she also could completely believe her when she said that she had never been with a girl before, because Emma's touch was hesitant, nervous. It was sort of funny, she had always heard people talking about how awesome it was to be with virgins, and she could admit that there was a certain perverse glee that she got from knowing that Emma had never really done this before, and this was her very first time touching another woman in a sexual way, and it was with  _her_ , dammit, but at the same time, it would sort of have been easier if Emma just knew what she was doing. Well, that was all right, she could teach her.

Either way, she let her explore, let the other touch wherever and whatever she wanted, with nervous but eager fingers. And when Emma leaned forward and fussed with the clasp on the front of her bra for a moment, before finally getting it free, and tossing it aside, Jennifer just laughed, and grinned at her.

"Well, I suppose that is  _one_  thing that sleeping a girl has got going for you," Emma said, smirking. "Guys seem to be utter idiots, when it comes to breasts."

"They really are." She agreed.

"And they can't seem to figure their way around a bra, so that's something that I guess we've got going for us too," she added, letting her fingers roam, tweaking a nipple, mostly out of curiosity.

Jennifer bucked, sucking in a sharp breath.

"Oh!" Emma held up her hand, eyes wide. "...good gasp, or bad gasp?"

"Good gasp," she panted, grinning at her.

"Oh, right then... more of those, then..." she slid forward, cupping Jennifer's breasts, as though weighing them with her hands. "These are bigger than mine."

"Are you actually complaining?" She laughed, softly.

"Not really. Just... observing." Emma planted a soft kiss on the top of each breast, left then right, then looked up at her. "So... are you going to lose the jeans, too, or do I have to threaten that everything we do tonight has to be kept above the belt?"

"I think if I kept everything above belt, none of your mind blowing orgasms are going to be happening," Jennifer grinned, but leaned back again, and popped the button on her jeans, then started sliding the zipper down.

"Mmm, you never know. Maybe the sheer taboo of having sex with a girl is enough to get me off." She teased.

"Is it?" Jennifer grinned, and shifted off of Emma's leg, climbing right off of the bed so that she could push her jeans down. Wriggling out of them, she kicked them aside, considered her for a moment, then hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her panties, wishing that they were a little nicer, considering the circumstances, and not just blue boy shorts with a little butterfly stamped on the front. Maybe if she had known that she was going to be seducing a girl virgin, she would have worn lace, or satin, or something. Well, no, actually, considering the fact that they had been leaping off of roofs and things, earlier, it was probably better, long run, that she had been wearing comfortable cotton panties. "So, do these stay, or do they go?"

"Go go go," Emma laughed, grinning.

"Your wish is my command, princess," She pushed them down, and off, kicking them in vaguely the same direction as her jeans. "I am going to show you a whole new world."

"Cheeeesy," the blond sang at her, and wriggled her fingers, beckoning her back to the bed. "Come on, come back here, I want to see."

"Coming, coming," she laughed, crawling back on the bed. "What, couldn't see from where I was? Need glasses?"

"No... I just wanted a close up," Emma murmured, and there was that nervousness again, trying to cover it up with bravado, trying to look confident and eager, but still, there was enough honest eagerness shining through in her eyes that she began to explore again, carefully, and Jennifer definitely let her. She wanted Emma to be comfortable. She wanted her to  _enjoy_  herself. So of course she wasn't going to push her off, or tell her not to.

"See anything you like there?" She whispered, watching the other girl's eyes.

Emma looked up, and grinned at her, sheepishly. "Mind if I... touch?"

"Touch anything you want," she laughed, grinning. "Trust me. You're not going to break anything. Explore. Generally speaking, if there's something  _you_  find really fucking amazing, then there's a really good chance that I'm going to find it really fucking amazing, too."

"Good to know," she breathed, and shifted closer to her, mindful of her broken leg.

Jennifer reached out to curl her fingers in Emma's hair, licking her lips as she watched the other move her hand lower, then she bucked slightly when the other's fingertips found her way even lower. "God, Emma..."

"...oh."

"Ready for me to make you lose your mind?" She purred, licking her lips.

"Starting to think, yeah." She grinned, embarrassed, and shifted forward to press her lips to Jennifer's, quietly. "Let's see if I'm into girls or not."


	4. Chapter 4

 Emma held tight to the railings of the stairs in the home that she had lived in for over half of her life, stumbling embarrassedly down them. She was sort of hopping, awkwardly, wishing that she had a real cast, instead of just this splint and bandages that Jennifer had set up for her. It seemed to  _work_ , but it was sort of awkward, because she couldn't at least put a cast down on the floor, or something.

 

Of course, she'd broken bones before in her life, and gotten casts put on them, so she knew the frustrating feel of her limbs being trapped inside the restrictive heat of her plaster casts - but at least that was better than this.

The alarm around her neck suddenly burst into alarms, klaxon of sounds, and she froze on the staircase, eyes wide.

Zombies? The motion detector was thrown off...

The front door thumped open, and Tom and Matthew tumbled in through the door, grinning brightly as they waved up at her. "It's just us!" Tom called. He was grinning, and carrying several large duffle bags of things, she wasn't sure what was in them, and seemed entirely comfortable with the fact that he had a hatchet strapped onto his belt. "We went out on a food run! Well, a stealing from the grocery store run... I think we've got enough food stuff here to last us until the actual end of the fucking world."

"You've got that one wrong," Emma carefully started working back down the stairs again, reaching up to carefully turn off the motion detector, then rearm it. "I think, technically, the world has  _already_  ended."

"Yes, I guess that's true, too." he grinned, and thumped the bags down on the ground. "You shouldn't be on yer feet, should you?"

"Why, you gonna tattle to Jennifer?" She grinned, still hopping down the stairs.

"Excuse me, why would he need to tattle?"

Emma gripped the railing, and leaned over the edge, considering the kitchen door, where Jennifer stood with her hands on her hips, looking up at her with a grin. "Heya, Jennifer, sweetheart, how's things going?"

"Thinks are going just fine. Why in the world are you out of bed?"

"Because I swear I was developing bed sores," Emma said, cheekily, and hopped down the last few steps, yelping in surprise when Matthew suddenly slid himself under her arm, smiling sheepishly at her as he helped her hobble towards the kitchen. "Oh, well... thank you, Matthew, darling, awful nice of you... not really necessary, but awfully nice of you..."

He snorted, and helped her settle in the seat at the head of the table. "Yeah, except that Jennifer has threatened to shoot an arrow through our foreheads if we didn't take care of you."

She blinked, and twisted to look back at Jennifer where she was working at the stove. "Oi! I'm not fragile, you know!"

"Except that you  _are_ , and we really need to get you fixed up." Jennifer just grinned back at her.

"You're diabolical, and sort of mean." She pouted, slightly, and flopped back in her seat, resting her hands on her stomach, relaxing. She watched as Tom and Matthew carted in the bags, dumping them on the kitchen table, and sighed softly. "You know, if I ever had to face the end of the world... I'm sort of glad that we've had to face it from inside my house."

"Well, I hate to tell you this, but I don't think we'll be staying here forever." Jennifer pointed out, smiling faintly as she added chopped tomatoes to the pot she was cooking in.

"I thought you said you were a terrible cook," Emma said, watching her.

"I am, but I can chop stuff up and add it to a pot." She shrugged. "Which happens to be what I'm doing. I'm making... stew? Or something. I don't know? Tom? What exactly would you call it?"

He stepped closer, and leaned over the pot, looking inside. "...stew."

"Yeah, we'll go with that," she agreed, nodding slightly, and started adding other things to the pot, bits and pieces, humming slightly. "So, as I had said earlier... we can't stay here, forever. We're going to have to get moving, don't you think? I mean, yes, it's a nice house, don't get me wrong, Emma, I dearly hope that we can rid the world of zombies and come back here and get old and fat and happy in this house. But let's be honest, there are a whole lot of zombies marching around out there, wanting to eat us, and... well, it's not very  _safe_  to stay here, is it?"

Emma sighed, reluctantly. "No, I suppose it's not."

"Sorry babe," Jennifer stepped away from the stove to kiss her forehead, quietly.

"Yeah, no... I need to think, I know." She shrugged, grinning up at her. "I know what it's like, we're not going to be safe here, forever."

It was like some kind of awful serendipity, because at that exact moment, the alarm around her neck started screaming again, howling out in panic and terror, and she jumped, startled. " _That_  isn't you!" She gasped, looking up at Tom and Matthew.

"No," Tom gaped at her, stunned. "It's not. What - what do we do?!"

"Get me to the door." Emma tugged herself up in her seat, angrily, grabbing the rifle that was laying on the kitchen table. She had weapons scattered everywhere around the house, now that they'd picked some up at the sporting goods store, and she had ammo everywhere, too, which is why she scooped up a box of bullets, too, and reached out. She'd told Tom what the plan was going to be, until she could get her leg properly fixed, so he immediately bent, and let her clamber up onto his back, like a piggy back ride, throwing the arm holding the ammo around his neck as she held the gun in her other hand.

Jennifer had already grabbed her bow, and was running past her to the front door, slamming it open.

When Tom got Emma out to the door, Jennifer was standing on the front porch, holding her bow cocked and ready, arrow pointing directly at a man that was standing on the front walk way, looking sort of awkward, hands held up in surrender. "I'm not a flesh eater!" He was saying, sort of desperately. "I'm not a monster, seriously, I just need to talk to - Emma! Emma, I need to talk to you!"

The moment she saw who it was, Emma scowled, and shook her head. "Feel free to shoot him, Jennifer."

He squeaked. "Hey! Emma, hold on, don't you think that's a little  _drastic_?! I just need to talk to you...!"

Jennifer glanced at her, sharply. "...he's human. He's not a zombie."

"Yeah, well... you can still feel free to shoot him," she grumbled, holding onto Tom's neck and wishing that she could sit down, because the more he had to hold her up, the more her calf throbbed, aching. "Take me back inside, Tom, I don't need to be out here for this."

" _Emma_!" He howled, freaking out. "Come on, you can't leave me out here like this, there are people out there that are  _eating people_ , I just need to talk to you!"

"I'm not letting you in my  _house_ , Aldis!" She called. "C'mon, Tom, you're supposed to be walking me back  _inside_."

"You know him?" Jennifer asked, sharply.

"Yes! She knows me!" He waved up at the house. "Come on, Emma!"

"Emma?" She asked, again.

Sighing heavily, Emma rolled her eyes, and since Tom  _still_  hadn't brought her back inside the house, she squeezed his shoulders and said, "Fine. Up on the porch. But you're not allowed in my  _house_ , Aldis."

"Okay, okay. Just... give me a minute, okay?" He stepped up the stairs, into the covered porch. Jennifer didn't move the arrow from him, though, and he looked a little skittish when he stepped up, into the shelter of the small roof that overhung the porch. Licking his lips, hands still out, warily, he said, "Okay, Emma, look... you've clearly got your little crew here, and everything, but... you do know the situation, right? Like... there are people out there eating people..."

"Zombies." She said, calmly, still holding onto Tom's shoulders.

"...yeah, okay, sure, zombies..."

"Zombies." Jennifer agreed with Emma, arching a brow at her. "I mean, unless you know why there's any other reason that a bunch of people would simultaneously start devouring other humans."

"Well, actually..." Aldis started.

"Don't you  _start_ , Aldis Hodge." Emma said, sharply. "Don't ask him questions like that, Jennifer, he's a med student, and a paramedic, and he has these stupid ideas. So yeah, he'll come up with a thousand other reasons that a bunch of people might eat other people, so don't ask him that kind of stuff. I get it, Aldis. There is bad stuff happening out there, the whole world is falling around our ears. So why are you  _here_?"

He took a deep breath. "I'm here because I - I need help. I mean... you're the only person I know in the whole world who might know what the  _fuck_  to do, in this situation."

Jennifer's brows furrowed. "Why is that?"

"Oi, really, it needs to be brought up  _now_? That's not fair." She huffed, slightly, then shook her head. "Aldis means that because he knows how I was raised."

"...how were you raised?" Tom asked, twisting slightly to look at her.

"Like a paranoid freak. You didn't think it unusual that I had a revolver in my bedside table? I was raised paramilitary. Right to bear arms. All that jazz. Look, Aldis, it's great that you want to live out the apocalypse and all that, because who doesn't, but listen... I'm not really looking to adopt anyone else, okay?"

"I get it, I know you don't want to talk to me, you haven't talked to me in six years, I get it, but..." His eyes flicked to her leg, frowning slightly. "...if nothing else, you know I can set your leg."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You can't set casts without tools."

"I got the tools." He jerked his head to the side of the road.

"...you stole an  _ambulance_?!" She gaped at him, shocked, eyes wide.

"...dude." Tom said, blinking. "That's badass."

"I didn't really  _steal_  it so much as I just... didn't take it back to the hospital." He cleared  his throat, embarrassed. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I probably  _should_ have brought it back, but... there was this thing where flesh eating people were ripping people apart, and my partner got caught when he was trying to help fix this guy that was probably a monster anyway, so... I just... drove. To find you."

Matthew, who was leaning in through the front door, tapped Emma's shoulder. "Come on, it might be a good thing to have a paramedic... I mean, in case anything happens..."

She sighed, heavily. "... _fine_."

Jennifer frowned for a moment, then finally lowered her bow and arrow, tossing the arrow back into her quiver. "Fine. We'll let you in. But if you do anything that pisses Emma off, you're out."

He blinked, eyes wide. "...I'm pretty sure my breathing pisses her off."

"Then you'd better breathe quietly." She snapped.

Tom shook his head, and headed back into the house, carrying Emma on his back as he headed back for the kitchen. "So, ah... what's the deal with that guy?"

"None of your business, Tom." She said, closing her eyes as she leaned into his shoulder.

"...come on, I'm being your horse, don't you think that entitles me to  _some_ answers?" He pouted.

"Nope." She slumped into her seat, leaning back.

Jennifer stepped into the kitchen, quietly, setting her bow on the table as she reached over to slide her fingers through Emma's hair, for a moment, quietly, brushing it back. "You sure you're okay?" She asked, softly, still running her fingers through her hair.

"Gonna have to be, aren't I?" She shrugged. "Matthew was right, having a paramedic around probably  _is_  a good idea, I probably need someone to fix this leg up, if nothing else..."

"Yeah, but you don't want him here." She said, quietly.

"No, I really don't." She agreed, looking up at Jennifer, and smiled faintly. "I don't want him in my mother's house."

"Do I need to gut him?" she asked, with a cheeky sort of grin, and she figured that maybe, if she asked, her friend actually  _would_  do that for her.

"No... it's... complicated." She murmured.

"Okay," she bent, kissing her softly, quietly.

There was a clatter, and both of them jumped, startled.

Aldis stood in the doorway of the kitchen, holding several boxes of things in his arms, and there was apparently another one that he had been holding that was now laying on the kitchen floor. He cleared his throat, embarrassed, and said, awkwardly, "Sorry, I'm still as much a klutz as ever..."

"A great skill for a doctor," Jennifer said, sarcastically, and straightened, pushing off of Emma's chair. "I'm gonna go finish our stew."

"Good idea," Emma said, taking a deep breath. "You mind if we fix my leg in here, or...?"

"It'd be easier if we could lay you down on a bed, or something," Aldis said, clearing his throat, slightly.

"I am not going to be anywhere near a bed with you, Aldis Hodge," she said, firmly, and settled back in her chair. "Here is going to have to do, as long as Jennifer doesn't need me to go somewhere else."

"Nope, I'd like to have you in here," she said, calmly.

Emma could see the distrust of Aldis in her eyes, which was pretty wild, she was distrustful of a person that she'd never actually met, just because  _Emma_  didn't like him, which made her think that Jennifer really valued her opinion. And okay, maybe that made her a little warm and fuzzy inside. Might have had something to do with the fact that she  _liked_  her more than she had expected to. (Yes, Jennifer was right, she  _did_  like girls, dammit.) But maybe it just had something to do with the fact that the other was keeping her here to keep an eye on her, and to keep an eye on Aldis, to make sure that he didn't do anything to her. Sort of nice, quite frankly.

Aldis took a deep breath, clearly thinking about how this was going to work, then just shook his head, and crouched in front of her, considering her leg. "Who wrapped this up, the first time?"

"That would be me," Jennifer suddenly loomed over his shoulder, holding a wooden spoon that she had been using to stir the stew. "You got a problem with that?"

He cleared his throat, and glanced up at her. "Actually, I was thinking that you did a pretty good job, for an amateur."

She frowned, narrowing her eyes at him for a moment, then shook her head. She tapped her hand with the spoon, then went back to the stove to start mixing the stew again, saying, calmly, "Yeah, well, I took a lot of first aid courses over the years. I'm pretty damn good at what I do."

"That's my Jennifer." Emma said, calmly, arching a brow at Aldis when he looked sharply up at her. "Yes?"

"Didn't know you were into girls," he said, clearing his throat, and went to work at unwrapping the bandages that Jennifer had painstakingly wrapped around her leg, with the wooden braces that she had set into them, to hold her broken bones as closely into their places as she could manage to get them. The bandages had been wrapped quite tightly around her leg, holding everything together, and as Aldis unwound them, her leg began to throb, more and more, until finally he pulled all of the bandages free, and she hissed in pain, biting her lower lip, hard. "Sorry," he said, still working. "I know broken legs aren't any fun."

"No, not exactly a picnic." She said, through grit teeth, watching him work.

He worked, quietly, gathering his ingredients - plaster and braces and everything else together, then started running his hands gingerly and carefully up and down her calf. "I wish we had an X-Ray, so we could see exactly how the break went..."

"They didn't have X-Rays, back in the old days," she pointed out, panting through her gritted teeth.

"I also wasn't  _trained_  in the old days," he pointed out, smirking slightly as he suddenly twisted her leg.

Emma shouted, bucking slightly, clutching tightly at the arms of her chair, and Jennifer bolted forward, clearly having been keeping a close eye on these proceedings, rather than on her stew. "What are you doing?!" Jennifer roared, furiously.

"Setting the bone." He blinked up at her, startled. "Sometimes it works better to just do it fast and quick, before they get a chance to brace themselves, or... you know... I was going to have to do it, anyway, I just - I just had to get the bone set!"

"It's okay," Emma said, through gritted teeth. "Just... get the  _cast_  on it, dammit!"

Jennifer shifted around to the back of her chair, looping her arms around Emma's neck, holding her close, resting her head on her shoulder as she watched him work. Aldis worked quite quickly, neatly, orderly, and by the time he was done, her leg - wrapped right around her foot and up her calf - all casted, firmly.

"That's going to have to do," Aldis said, as he settled back, standing to go wash his hands in the sink. "It's not perfect, but it's going to have to do."

"Is it dry?" Jennifer asked, frowning.

"No, it'll take awhile for that, usually I'd have a heat gun to set it, but... I haven't got one here. Though maybe a hair dryer would help out a little, if you've got one of those..."

Emma closed her eyes, and looked up at Jennifer. "In my bathroom, can you go grab it?"

"You sure?" She asked, frowning slightly.

"Yeah," she smiled up at her. "I can handle him."

"All right." She murmured, and kissed Emma softly before slipping out of the kitchen, and heading upstairs.

Aldis was silent for a few long minutes, as he continued to wash up his things, clearing his throat, slightly. Turning around so that he faced her, he leaned on the counter, and said, quietly. "So... long time, no see, Emma."

"And I could have gone a lot longer without seeing you, too." She said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Come on..." he sighed softly. "We were  _good_  together."

"That was a  _long_  time ago, Aldis." She said, shaking her head. "And no matter what you say, it's never going to happen again, either. So stop focusing on it, because what we had back then... we are never going to have again."

"I don't..." He took a deep breath, pursing his lips. "I don't understand why."

"Sometimes we aren't supposed to understand life, Aldis." She said, bitterly. "Because sometimes life is a bitch."

"Are you sure it's  _life_?" He arched a brow.

"Bite me, asshole." Emma snapped. "Actually... don't. Because if you do, I'm going to have to shoot you in the face, and as much as that might actually give me great pleasure, I don't want to get blood all over my mother's house."

He tightened his jaw, trying to keep himself calm, but he was clearly frustrated. "Emma... I don't hate you. I don't understand why you hate  _me_. You walked out in the middle of the night, left me alone, took everything... and never responded when I tried to call, or write, or email, or show up at your house, or at school... it was like I ceased to exist to you. I didn't understand it, because... fuck, I thought we had the _perfect_  relationship, still. I think that... whatever happened, whatever made you hate me, you didn't give me a chance to make it up to you. I mean... I get that you did the same thing with your dad, but - "

"You have no right to talk about my father." She said, quietly, dangerously quietly.

He hesitated, then bit his lip, and dipped his head. "You're right. You're  _right_. I'm sorry. I... thought I was over this."

She closed her eyes, then shifted forward slightly, and said, "Look... Aldis... I don't hate you. But I also knew that there was  _no_  way that we could be together anymore, okay? And over the years, I think that's... turned into hatred? But no, I don't actually  _hate_  you. But I'm sure as hell not in love with you anymore, and I... _know_  that we can't be together anymore, okay? It's never going to happen. Go... find yourself another girlfriend."

"What makes you think I haven't?" He protested, sort of good naturedly, and she found herself smirking slightly.

"Because if you had, she would be here." She pointed out. "Or at the very least, you would have run to her, instead of here, when the world started ending."

He crinkled his nose slightly, considering that. "...that might make a little too much sense, for me, actually."

Emma rolled her eyes, then looked up in relief when Jennifer entered the room, blow dryer in hand. "Hey... heya babe, was it hard to find? I probably should actually keep it out, instead of shoving it in stupid places..."

"I found it," Jennifer leaned over to kiss her forehead again.

They were both being overly affectionate, far more touchy feely and kissy than they had been since the day that they had actually, well, 'gotten together'. What was funny about it was that they  _weren't_  actually together, they were just sort of, you know, sleeping together and having a lot of sex and sort of making out whenever the opportunity presented itself, but they weren't actually dating or anything. But god, for Aldis, or hell, any other stranger that might have walked in here, they would have definitely thought that they  _were_ , they were affectionate and lovey dovey and using  _pet names_.

She wasn't really sure if they were doing it for Aldis' benefit, that maybe Jennifer was deliberately doing it to make Aldis back off, further.

It was with a bit of a jolt, as Aldis was using the blow dryer to dry her cast, that she realized that Jennifer was fucking  _jealous_  of this man that had just snuck into their life, an interloper that didn't really deserve to be there.

And what surprised her a little was how very  _pleased_  she felt to realize that.

Shifting up, she caught Jennifer's hand, and squeezed her fingers, quietly, smiling up at her. Tugging her a little closer, she leaned up a little, and said, "Hey... can I get a kiss?"

Jennifer blinked, surprised, then leaned forward to kiss her, obligingly.

Aldis sort of cleared his throat again, awkwardly.

She grinned against the other girl's lips, and didn't actually feel all that bad about it.

 

+++

 

Matthew sat in Emma's living room, one of the rifles across his knees as he looked out the front window at the street, quietly. He wished that he knew what he was doing better, with the gun, but at least it was a better weapon than the axe, because presumably he could keep further back from any attacking zombie swarms without getting up close and personal with them.

Provided he could actually  _hit_  them, of course.

He had one of the motion detector alarms around his neck, so that if someone breeched the motion detector line of security they had around the house and in the doorways, he would know, but all the same, he was still looking out the window, watching for attackers.

There was a radio on the coffee table, playing the local All Classical channel. As it happened, at the moment it wasn't really a  _classical_  station, although if you listened closely, you could almost always hear it in the background, behind the speaking. The crazy bastard that had locked himself in the office of the radio station wasn't one of the DJs, he was just one of the janitors, they thought, though he hadn't revealed exactly what his position at the radio station had been, or why he was there. All they knew was that he had claimed that his name was Morgan Freeman, that he had the smoothest and most soothing voice that any of them had ever heard, and that except for occasional short breaks in which they assumed he was sleeping and he cranked the classical music, he kept up almost constant chatter. Usually, it was updates on what was going on in the world around them. He seemed to have information that not even Emma was able to find on the computer, when she went looking, and Matthew wondered if maybe some of the world's news reporters were still going, properly. Sometimes Morgan talked about the lootings that were going on in Portland, sometimes he would talk about the zombies, sometimes he would give them advice on how to boil their water or what to do if -  _when_  - the power went out, but sometimes he would get off on tangents, and would ramble for hours about his ex-wife or about the car he'd dreamed of buying, when he was a teenager.

He loved listening to Morgan, because it was the closest thing he had to sanity right now, and the television hadn't been working in weeks, now.

"So as you all know," Morgan was saying, "The regular population of the city of Portland is at almost six hundred thousand, specially if you count the suburbs. Some people say it's a lot less, though, since those scrawney little Hipsters insist on getting themselves checked twice by the census, cause they say that they were here before the census was started, and the poor takers get all confused and they end up countin' 'em twice. Either way, though... we're at maybe two hundred now. Two hundred  _thousand_ , no need to get yerself all worked up and panicky... there are more than just a little bitty handful of people left. Of course, compared to six hundred thousand, two hundred thousand is a little freaky. Well! Let me make you feel better, ladies and gentlemen. There are actually only  _about_  a hundred thousand undead hoards in the city. Yeah, that means they ate about three hundred thousand people... so... if your loved ones are among the dearly digested, I  _do_  apologize. Well, unless my ex-wife was one of them, cause in that case, good riddance, bitch. She's probably more useful as fertilizer, anyhow. Either way, though, considering all of the projected survival rates of the zombie apocalypse thingers that you young people all kept running on the internet, we're actually doin' pretty good. I mean, we could have it the other way round, too!"

Matthew actually snorted, as he leaned back in his armchair, looking out at the street and wishing that he was anywhere but here right now. It wasn't that he didn't like listening to Morgan talk - because that was probably so far his very favourite part of this damn apocalypse - and it wasn't that the company was bad. Frankly, if he had to be stuck in a house with anyone, he didn't mind that it was  _them_.

Emma he'd known for years, now, he'd hired her because of her quick wit, not because of her ass like he always told her, but all the same, at least she was nice to be stuck with. She was  _smart_ , she came up with these answers that always seemed to calm him down right when he was most upset, and to make it better, every time he needed an answer for an obscure question, she had it. Maybe it was all the geek-dom, maybe it was all the Doctor Who. Maybe it was the English degree she often seemed to bemoan getting but never using, or maybe it was because she could concoct a story for anything. Or, perhaps, because she had this strange ability to shoot a gun like a fucking genius, and could apparently live through an apocalypse.

Jennifer he'd known considerably less time, but she seemed just as capable. Fuck, she all but threw him off a roof to save his life, and she was  _insanely_ impressive with that bow and arrow.

This Aldis guy seemed all right, he was sort of funny, liked being part of every conversation and was  _really_  good at video games - which thank god still worked - but he was sort of the invader on the scene, right now, and he wasn't really sure what he thought of him.

As for Tom, well...

"Hey, loser." Tom rapped his shoulder with his knuckles, leaning over the back of his chair. "My turn for watch."

"I'm listening to Morgan," he said, in protest, gesturing to the radio.  
  
"So? Go do that somewhere else." Tom seemed completely unswayed by his protests, and plunked down on the overstuffed arm of the chair in which Matthew sat.   
  
"But this is the only radio in the house!"  
  
It was, too, this was Emma's clock radio, the one that apparently normally sat beside her bed, but she had graciously handed it over so that whoever was doing watch at that time could listen to Morgan or occasionally classical music. Aside from the video games and movies that Emma still had stored on her shelves, this was really the only entertainment to be had, now. Wasn't like you could just dart out to the video rental place to find something, and the television had been out for over a week now, and the internet - when it worked - wasn't really the frequently updated thing it had once been. Their lives had become so dependent on the internet and cell phones that now it was hard to communicate with anyone. Land lines were still up, where people had them, but the cell towers had started failing very quickly, now that there was no one where to maintain them.   
  
"Then I guess you're just going to have to  _stop_  listening to Morgan then, aren't you?" Tom smirked, and smacked his shoulder. "Now move it, my turn to get the comfy chair."  
  
"I could just stay, and sit somewhere else," Matthew protested.  
  
"Maybe  _I_  don't want to listen to Morgan." The other shot back, still grinning at him, and tugged the radio closer to himself. "And seeing as how I'm the one on watch..."  
  
"Then give me the radio, let me listen somewhere else!"  
  
"Nope. Cause I may  _want_  to listen to Morgan, later, so I'm afraid I can't just hand it over to you." Tom shrugged. "Your loss, mate. So fuck off, then."  
  
Matthew glowered at him. "He's giving the update on the state of the city, we need to know - "  
  
"Blah blah blah." Tom made a puppet with his hands. "I hear you talking, but I'm not hearing anything worth listening coming out."  
  
Balling his hands into fists, he grit his teeth at him. "Listen here, you arrogant little prick, I have had it up to about  _here_  with your bullshit, and if you don't cut me some slack, I swear to god - "  
  
"Ooooh." He wiggled his fingers at him. "The scarecrow man is getting pissed off. Watcha gonna do, loser, write me a sternly worded letter?"  
  
Matthew roared in fury, and threw himself at Tom, grabbing him right around the middle as he threw Tom right off of the arm of the chair, and followed him down, landing on top of the other man as he tried to drive his shoulder into the other's gut. Not, perhaps, the wisest plan, for a whip thin man to try and attack one that seemed to have muscles on top of some of his muscles, but he was angry enough, at that moment, to have tackled a bear.  
  
Tom let out a strange sort of  _oof_  sound when his back hit the ground, then he roared in laughter, grinning at Matthew. "You call that a  _hit_? I think I've been hurt more playing checkers."  
  
So Matthew tried to actually punch him, though Tom blocked it almost casually. Frustrated, he howled at him, and committed a cardinal sin, grabbing the other's fairly short hair, and twisting.  
  
"Oh  _fuck_ , you little  _sissy_!" Tom shouted, finally actually angry, and started throwing a few blows of his own.  
  
His knuckles slammed Matthew in the side of the head, and he reeled back, slightly woozy and stunned, but then Tom hit him again, and he tumbled off of his position on top of the other man, landing with a crash on his back, blinking up at the now-spinning ceiling. Bewildered, he reached up to touch his forehead, confused, but then Tom was shifting over, too. Tom straddled his hips, pinning Matthew to the floor, now, raining blows down on his head and face.  
  
He struggled to fight back, getting a few good blows of his own in, now, one bad enough that when his knuckles hit Tom's nose, there was a crunch and a spurt of blood over his hand, and Tom swore colourfully at him.   
  
Dizzy and hurting, Matthew finally managed to catch his fingers in the collar of Tom's shirt, and jerked him closer to himself, trying to get him off balance, cut off his line of easy attack to his face.  
  
Rasping as he breathed, he looked up at Tom, and begged, " _Stop_."  
  
Panting himself, Tom looked back at him, their faces weirdly close together, his lower face smeared with blood, and Matthew didn't feel any pride at having caused that.   
  
Only then Tom shifted, and crushed his bloody mouth against Matthew's, almost more of another kind of attack than just a kiss.  
  
Matthew pressed back with an almost equal violence, lips mashing between their teeth as they assaulted each other with their mouths, and when Tom actually pushed his tongue into his mouth, he bit on it. Tom actually laughed, and caught Matthew's lower lip in his own teeth, tugging on it. He found himself groaning, and shifting the hands that had only moments before been trying to push him away to curl around the back of his neck to pull him closer. Fingers tangled in the other's short hair, he chased the taste of blood on the other's lips, the hot slick-slide of blood and saliva, somehow all the more sharp and real for being wrong.

Tom shifted closer to him, full on rutting against Matthew's hips, and he gasped, arching under him, tightening his grip on the other's hair. This moment, he thought, as Tom's teeth scrapped along the side of his jaw, catching on his skin and the stubble that was trying desperately to grow on his jaw - and mostly failing, incidentally - really needed less clothing. A lot less clothing. No clothing, actually. That would be the perfect thing to be happening, right now, a complete lack of clothes so that he could do  _exactly_  this but with skin on skin.

Apparently Tom felt the same, too, because his hand slid under Matthew's shirt, making him feel skittish and jittery when fingertips - as rough and harsh as his mouth had been  - skidded across his stomach.

Delighted by this opening development, he finally released one of his hands from Tom's hair - as much as he liked having his hands there, tangled in the short dirty blond locks, feeling like it was his only grip on the comet that was moving over him, hips rocking into his - to push it up the back of Tom's shirt, scraping his nails across his lower back, arching up when  _that_  made Tom thrust against  _him_  all the harder.

Matthew tried to twist them, tried to get on top of Tom again, but the other was having absolutely none of that, and just laughed, keeping him firmly pinned down to the floor. Tom looked, frankly, downright smug about himself, and bent again to actually bite at Matthew's neck, with as much violence and ruthlessness that they had been doing everything else.   
  
Letting out a huff of breath, Matthew stubbornly bucked against him, then wriggled his fingers down the back of the other's jeans, exploratory.   
  
Tom let out a hissed curse, teeth clipping at his collarbone, as though trying to catch it and missing in his distraction, stubble scraping against Matthew's skin as he did, and he just knew that there was going to be awkward stubble burn in unusual places, later, not that he could really bring himself to actually care all that much, after all.   
  
Growling softly, he wormed his hand further under the other's jeans, then froze, startled, when the lights suddenly went out, plunging the room into darkness. They stayed utterly still for a moment, then Tom was suddenly surging up to his feet, already in a flurry of motion, and Matthew just pushed himself up onto his elbows, watching as the other moved, grabbing the gun and checking the window, first, just in case, then grabbing the battery, flipping it over, and jamming the batteries they had kept ready - just in case - into the bottom. There was a moment of silence in the room as he shoved them in, then abruptly the radio flared to life again, almost too loud after the silence of just a moment before.  
  
" - repeat, don't panic, it's just a power outage, folks!" Morgan was saying, almost frighteningly cheerfully. "Although I do have to say that it's sort of trippy, being up here, looking out over the dark city... don't remember the last time I've seen the city so dark! Not a street light or stop light or house light working as far as the eye can see, folks, so it looks like the zombies finally got to the power station! If ye were smart enough to get a battery powered radio, then I guess yer listening to me explain this, and if ye weren't.... well, I suppose yer probably running around like an asshole having a panic attack. Don't worry, though, I set up the generators real good, here, so I'll be on the air for the next... well, until I get eaten, I think I'm good to keep going, but for all you out there... well, I hope when ye did yer looting ye got yerself a generator, cause yer gonna be having a doozy of a time with no power, ye know!"  
  
Tom looked sharply at Matthew. "Do we have a generator?"  
  
Still slightly breathless, he nodded. "A couple. Emma has them set up to go on the back porch all ready, they're set to go."  
  
"Well, maybe we should get 'em  _going_ , before Emma has to hobble out - "  
  
The lights suddenly flared on again, startling them both, then a moment later, Jennifer leaned in the doorway of the living room and reached in to flick the lights off, plunging the room into the same semi-evening twilight that it had been a few minutes before. "We got the generators running, but we have to conserve fuel. Try not to use lights or anything that needs power unless you absolutely need it, got it?" She glanced at them, her brows furrowing at she realized that Matthew was laying on the ground. "What are you doing down there?"  
  
"I fell down?" He offered, lamely.  
  
She didn't look impressed with that answer, and looked up at Tom, then blinked again. "And what the hell happened to  _you_?"  
  
"The loser fell on my face. I think he broke my nose, actually." Tom reached up to touch the bridge of his nose, frowning, then lowered his hand. "I take it back. Not broken. Just bashed. Consider yourself lucky, scarecrow."  
  
"Consider  _myself_  lucky?!" Matthew yelped, and scrambled up to his feet, grabbing at the back of the arm chair to support himself - he was still woozy after the beating he'd taken, earlier, and apparently bolting up and having all the blood rush to his head was a poor idea.   
  
"Yeah." Tom crossed his arms over his chest. "Consider  _yourself_  lucky, that for payback for breaking my nose, you didn't get your teeth shoved back down your throat."  
  
"You little - " Matthew started, taking a half step forward.  
  
"Woah, woah, woah!" Jennifer threw up her hands. "Seriously, if you two are going to hatefuck again, can you at least do it in a bedroom, or something? Maybe outside, where there's nothing to be broken by you assholes?"  
  
Tom scoffed. "What the hell are you talking about, woman?"  
  
She motioned around her mouth. "Matthew's got the proof around his mouth, boys. Look, just... do it quietly, and don't break shit."  
  
As she left the room, Matthew gaped at Tom, wide-eyed. "What does she  _mean_ , I've got proof around my mouth?"  
  
Tom glanced at him, sharply, then his expression seemed to soften slightly, the corner of his mouth twitching up as though he was trying to suppress a smile that was trying to fight its way onto his face. Apparently, he gave up even trying, and just grinned, bursting into laughter.  
  
"What?!" He demanded again.  
  
"God... you're a mess..." Tom stepped forward, and though Matthew flinched back slightly, he just grabbed his shoulders, and man handled him around so that his back was to Tom's chest, then marched him towards a mirror that hung on the opposite wall. To make the room bigger, Emma had said, when he'd asked why in the world there was a large mirror hanging above the couch, opposite the window. It  _did_  sort of make the room bigger, as it reflected back the light from the window, making the room sort of glow, in the middle of the sunniest days. Either way, it was this mirror that Tom stood him in front of, now, grinning as he hooked his chin over the taller man's shoulder, and nodded at the mirror. "That's what she means, evidence all around your mouth."  
  
Matthew gaped at his own reflection, which seemed to be getting more and more flushed with embarrassment with every passing moment. There was blood smeared all around his mouth, though it clearly hadn't come from him, and it sort of matched the way that blood was smeared around Tom's mouth, as well as down Matthew's jaw and neck, as though tracing the exact line that the other's lips had taken.  
  
"Oh." He said, sort of sheepishly.  
  
Tom grinned at him in the mirror, and suddenly looped his arms around Matthew's waist, tugging him back against his chest. "You know, we don't look so bad, together."  
  
"We look like some kind of serial killers, or something!" Matthew protested, waving at the mirror.  
  
"And? We're in the middle of the fucking zombie apocalypse. The world is literally fucking ending. I say that the serial killer look is really the way that things are going this year."  
  
"You're insane," he informed him, seriously.  
  
"Starting to think you like that about me," Tom kissed the side of his neck, though he could see that the other's eyes were still on the two of them in the mirror. "Look, we make a good pair."  
  
"We are a terrible pair." Matthew protested, though he did catch himself lifting his jaw so that the other had more room to work.   
  
"Wanna fuck off somewhere, then, be a terrible pair together?" Tom shifted behind him, and Matthew could definitely feel the way that the other was pressing against him, chest to back, and Tom was making absolutely no effort to hide the fact that apparently adrenaline and fighting got his engine running.  
  
"Can't." He swallowed, hard. "You're on watch, remember?"  
  
"Hm." Tom agreed, frowning slightly, then curled his hands over Matthew's hips, tugging him back again, even harder, rutting up against his ass, through their jeans. "Wanna make it a watch to remember, then?"  
  
Matthew licked his lips, and admitted, "Yeah."

  
+++

“I, ah… got some news this morning.”

Tom glanced up from the map that was spread across the living room floor, frowning slightly. He’d been scribbling out the routes they were supposed to be taking, should they finally leave this city, drawing the routes that Emma had told him to scribe out. “Yeah, what?”

Jennifer settled on the edge of the couch, looking down at the map that he was drawing on. She hugged herself, looking anxious. “You can take the Washington route off of the map.”

He glanced up at her, startled. “What?”

“I ah… I called back to my best friend’s place, earlier.” She ran her tongue along the front of her teeth, then took a deep breath. “I got a hold of his girlfriend. My friend… the one we would have been going to see, to get, if we’d gone up to Washington… he got eaten.”

“Shit,” he sucked in a sharp breath, straightening, almost standing. “You’re serious?  _Shit_. That’s… damn, Jenny, I’m – I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” she murmured, quietly. “Well… I mean, you guys… you’ll have family you’ll want to find, too, right?”

“Nope.” He shrugged, tapping the cap of his pen on the map. “I mean, I think Matthew’s already looked into checking on his family, and I spent pretty much my whole life in the foster system. Ward of the state, all that shit, sounds far more romantic in romance novels than it really is, in real life. So I’ve got no one to check on. Guess we could just stick with these other routes then, huh? Danvers and crazy-town in Nevada, right?”

“Yeah.” Jennifer nodded. “Seems sort of sad, doesn’t it, that this is all that’s left?”

“Could be worse.” He shrugged.

“Yeah,” she agreed, with a soft murmur, though the look on her face said that she clearly didn’t believe that. Sure, it was better, it  _could_  be worse. They could all be dead. But at this rate, who knew when that moment could change?

+++

  
"Hey."  
  
Emma didn't look up from her notebook as she scrawled the last few words down, but when Jennifer sank to sit down in the seat beside her, she did, flicking it closed. "Hey yourself."  
  
Jennifer leaned on her shoulder, letting her head rest on Emma's shoulder, and sighed, softly. Emma didn't mind in the slightest, she just slipped her arm around the other's waist, and held her against her side, as they looked out over the front porch, the driveway, and beyond. It was early in the morning still, early enough that the sun hadn't properly come over the horizon, and there were sort of misty patches still, between some of the buildings. It wasn't really as cold as it should be for the time of year, though, and Emma had joked before that maybe it was because there wasn't anywhere to go, so of course the universe decided that when it didn't matter whether or not they had to go out, it was beautiful. Tempt people outside so that they could get eaten, maybe. Her little house was set up on a hill that overlooked a mostly residential area, so they could see the houses spread out before them, mist clinging to the edges of their roofs, no one moving around, no activity anywhere. Usually, when she used to have a rare morning off, and she'd sit out here with a mug of coffee and a notebook, she was looking out at traffic, at mothers walking their children to school, at construction crews working on that one same fucking street every spring, over and over again. Today, it was still, which was something she was actually grateful for, because if there had been swarms of flesh eating zombies coming closer, they would have been scrambling to pack up their things and get into the tow truck and the ambulance.  
  
Fine vehicles of choice, for the end of the world, she thought.  
  
"Is it your turn for watch, then?" Emma finally broke the silence, brushing her fingertips quietly up and down Jennifer's side.  
  
"Hm," she nodded, though neither of them made an attempt to move. Then, Jennifer asked, "Whatcha working on?"  
  
"Oh, ah..." Emma glanced at the notebook, and shook her head. "Nothing."  
  
"Didn't look like nothing. Looked like you were writing something."  
  
"Funny how our eyes can be so deceptive like that," Emma shrugged, grinning slightly at her.   
  
"Yeah, funny." She agreed, then tried to reach over to snag it from her. Emma, naturally, shoved it further out of Jennifer's reach, quickly, laughing as the other sort of half climbed over to try and grab it. "C'mon, just give it here, I just want to see what kind of nothing you're working on!"  
  
"None of your business!" She laughed, then yelped as she toppled backwards on the porch. Jennifer fell on top of her, and as much as she tried to keep out of her reach, the other had longer arms, and simply snagged the notebook.   
  
Sitting up again, Jennifer flipped to the front of the notebook, and started reading, her expression changing slightly as she did, fading from an excited sort of giddiness at the fun of poking at Emma and trying to figure out what she was doing, and towards a more serious, contemplative sort of look. Emma thought she looked a little disappointed, really, but that might just be her projecting onto the other woman. Still, she lay still on the porch, trying not to look at the other's expression as she read, but it was like a train wreck that she couldn't look away from, and her eyes kept flicking back to Jennifer, trying to gauge what exactly she might have been reading at that exact moment based on her expression. It was a long, silent moment, though Emma's breath caught every time that the other flipped the page, expecting her to suddenly throw the thing away in disgust.  
  
Finally, Jennifer lowered the notebook, and said, "You wrote all of this?"  
  
She flushed, and spluttered, "Well, yeah, I mean... it's not any good, I know, but it's sort of like a hobby, it's just... you know..."  
  
"It's really good." She said.  
  
"Yeah, I know it needs a lot of editing, but I - " Emma paused, sitting up as she blinked at Jennifer. "...what?"  
  
"It's really good," she said, again. "I liked it. Is there more? It sort of feels like it starts in the middle of something that was already going on."  
  
"Uh... yeah." She said, finally, clearing her throat. "It's part of this huge story I've been working on for a few months, now... this is, uh, the most recent part... I posted the rest of it online already, so..."  
  
"Oh, you're  _publishing_  it?" Jennifer looked impressed.  
  
That was like a jolt to Emma's gut, and she swallowed thickly before she said, "No... not published. It's fanfic, it's not actually original, so I, ah..."  
  
"Fanfic?" Her brows furrowed, in realization, and oh god, Emma could feel the wave of judgment coming on, now. "Like, when you write about a tv show, or whatever?"  
  
"Yeah," she nodded, quietly. "This one has a bunch of original characters in a world that someone else created, you know, like the story that would have come before the actual story, what I think led up to it..."  
  
All she could think was that Aldis had all but mocked her writing, especially when it wasn't something publishable - not because he was being mean, but because he thought it was truly adorable and equally truly useless, for her to be writing that. That was why they had broken up, really, in the end, she had left him because she couldn't stand looking at him anymore and knowing that he would never support her dream of being a published author. He just had never understood that writing was as much a part of her makeup and her being alive as breathing was. She'd made some friendships become a whole lot more awkward by revealing that she wrote fanfiction, because some of them had the erroneous idea that writing fanfic was synonymous to plagiarism, and she'd had a few people claim that she was somehow infringing on the privacy of the real people that played those characters, even when she tried to explain that even in the case of real person fiction - which she was never a fan of, it just seemed to her to be a little unsettling, to write about a real actual person and not a fictional one played by a real person - actually had nothing to do with the real person's life, and the fanfic authors were in no way claiming that Jensen and Jared, for instance, were anything more than just coworkers. No matter what the fanfiction said, they didn't think they were real people - but all the same, fanfic authors had a saddening habit of getting maligned by those that didn't really understand what they were going for, here.

Smiling faintly up at Jennifer, Emma said, nervously, "Yeah, writing about movies and television shows and books and video games and pretty much anything you can think of, we'll find a way to make more stories about it."

"Huh." She shook her head slightly, and offered the notebook back. "I hear that's hard. I mean, cause you have to actually really understand the characters, right? You can't just make them do whatever the hell you want them to do and then go back later and say, 'well, yeah, of course he could do that, that's what they would do, I made them up, they can do whatever I want them to'. I mean, you have to actually know the characters, so that you can't have, like... I dunno, John McCain from Die Hard showing up at work wearing a pink tutu, or something. Just isn't anything he would do."

Emma laughed, feeling seriously better about herself - and about whatever the hell this was, with Jennifer. "Yeah, and if he did, then you have to write a whole story to explain why the hell you just had that happen."

"It's impressive." She smiled at her, leaning on the stone pillar that held the front porch up, relaxed. "You're a good author, Emma. Why haven't you ever published anything?"

"I have a massive stack of rejection letters." She shrugged. "Just never happened."

"That sucks." She frowned slightly, and reached out to tuck an errant lock of blond hair behind Emma's ear. "I would have totally loved to have read one of your books. Maybe if we un-end the world, we can kick start the publishing industry again, or something."

Emma snorted, shaking her head. "The only book anyone would want to read, then, would be a history of what the fuck happened."

"So write the history of what the fuck happened." Jennifer shrugged. "Or write porn. Everyone always wants to read porn, even if they don't admit it. I mean, Fifty Shades of Grey didn't become the number one bestseller book because people secretly  _hate_  to read porn."

"Ugh." She crinkled her nose. "Fine, I'll write porn. But if I do, can it at least be _good_  porn?"

"Deal." Jennifer smirked, leaning forward to kiss her. Her lips tasted very much like plastic strawberries, like lip chap or something, and it slid across her lips differently than just her naked bare lips did, as though they clung a little more. Emma decided she liked it, though, the way that her lips clung and scraped across hers, catching at her lower lip as the other moved against hers. Emma sighed, and slid her hand up to cup the back of the other's neck, kissing her back, eagerly, more than willing to forget that the whole world was falling apart around their ears, and that there was nothing good left, not really.

There was a sudden screech of sound, though, and they both jumped, startled.

For a moment, Emma really couldn't figure out what the sound was, it seemed so foreign in the previous silence of the early morning, like some kind of bizarre invader, but a moment later she realized that it  _was_  a familiar sound, after all - it was a car alarm. Standing up, she braced herself on the railing of the porch, frowning as she tried to figure out whose car had been disturbed, and realized that a few blocks further down the hill, there was movement. Someone had tried to steal a car, was what she thought was going on, at first. There were several people swarming over the vehicle, as though trying to get in, and then she realized that, no, it was far worse than that.

There was someone  _inside_  the car, all right, but there were other people outside the car, trying to get  _inside_  to the person, and based on the jerky, sort of mindless way that these people were moving, smashing at the windows, she didn't think they were trying to rob the person.

They were trying to eat them.

"Oh god, zombies."

Jennifer hissed, eyes wide. "Is everything packed and ready to go?"

"Yeah," Emma nodded, jerkily, thinking of everything she had deemed not important enough to pack. They were things that she  _wanted_ , but not things that were going to keep her or her friends alive, so her photos of her mother still hung - except for a few - in the kitchen, and her bookshelves were still filled with her books and her notebooks, and there were dozens of boxed sets of movies and television shows that had been her pride and joy not a month ago and now were going to be left behind... it was sort of tragic, in a way, but there were clothes she would need packed in tupperwears in the back of the ambulance, and there was food shoved into every nook and cranny of the tow truck, and the guns were already ready just inside the front door, ready to be grabbed and gone...

"All right." Jennifer kissed her forehead as she darted past, picking up the bow she had set down when she had come out onto the porch. "I'll go grab the guys. You grab the guns and get in the truck."

"Yeah, definitely," she shifted, and hobbled over to dig in the front room, scooping up her backpack - kept pretty much constantly ready, just in case - and her guns, hooking them under her arm. Fumbling forward, she headed for the front walk, desperate to get to the truck as quickly as she could.

The problem was, she forgot that the motion detectors were still armed, and when she stumbled out onto the lawn, they went off, wailing their displeasure that someone had breached their edges.

"Fuck!" She gasped, fumbling with the alarm around her neck to deactivate them. They weren't nearly as loud as that car alarm had been, but in the quiet of the morning, it certainly seemed to be piercing enough. Sure enough, when she lifted her head to look, the zombies those few streets down had lifted their heads from the bloody windows of the car - they'd broken in, god, she could see, and one of them was holding the head of someone that had apparently been attached only moments before, blood dripping over their fingers from the gaping wound that had been the person's neck - and they spotted her there, and started to move.

" _MOVE_!" Emma screamed, running as fast as her broken leg would take her as she dashed to the truck, sliding into the passenger seat and shoving the backpack to the floor, the guns to lean on the middle seat, and checking her sawed off. Good, it was primed. She was going to need it, she thought. " _They're on the move_!"

The front door of her mother's house slammed open, bashing against the wall from the sheer force that it had been forced open, shuddering in its frame as it tried to close, then Jennifer came bolting out, leaping off of the porch to the point where she actually cleared all three steps and landed, heavy footed, on the sidewalk, and was already running to the truck before she'd really had a chance to catch her balance. Sliding into the driver's seat, she slid the keys home, rougher than she really needed to, and cranked the engine. It roared to life, and she shoved her bow towards Emma, apparently trusting her to take care of it as she leaned over the back of the bench seat to holler at the house, "Come now or we leave your asses behind!"

Aldis came flying down the steps, rapidly, a duffle over his shoulder, and he bolted for the driver's seat of the ambulance.

Matthew followed, looking pale and alarmed, and Tom followed right behind him, his hand pressed against the other man's lower back as he pushed him forward, trying to get him to move faster. Instead of heading for the cab of the ambulance, Tom just grabbed the doors of the back, wrenching them open, and all but grabbing Matthew by his hips, shoving him up into the vehicle. He barely had scrambled inside before he was shouting, "Drive, drive, drive!"

Jennifer cranked the wheel of the tow truck, and skidded out of the parking spot, taking a u-turn that took her right up onto the sidewalk and lawn of the house across the road, knocking over the garbage cans that they hadn't touched in a couple weeks, anyway, and roaring down the road.

Emma rolled the truck's window down, then shifted so that she was leaning out of the window itself, aiming, and firing at the zombie that was getting closest to the ambulance.

The zombie was knocked back, blood spurting from its chest like a fine mist rain, but it didn't seem to slow it down. Scowling, she narrowed her eyes, and fired again, hitting it in the forehead, this time, and  _this_  time, the zombie was knocked backwards, and it didn't seem to be getting up. "Yeah," she muttered. "That's right, bitch, double tap."

The ambulance screamed along behind them, and Emma shifted back into her seat, satisfied that they were driving now and should be able to get away before the zombies managed to catch up to them.

"Guess I'm probably never going to see my house again, am I?" Emma asked, leaning back in her seat, holding the hot barrel of the shotgun, quietly, trying to comfort herself with that. Better than a teddy bear, really.

"Probably not," Jennifer said, and took a deep breath, letting it out, slowly. "...let's never cut it that close again, what do you say?"

"That sounds like a really good idea," she murmured, closing her eyes.

They drove for a few long minutes, Jennifer driving at much faster than strictly legal speeds, not that anyone was going to stop them. There was no one else out here, on the roads, and the few other vehicles they did see seemed to have been crashed into convenient lamp posts or walls, they didn't seem to have anyone in them. It was as though this city had become a ghost town, though when they passed some of the houses, and some of the businesses, Emma swore that she could see the occasional curtain flicker, the occasional person move in the windows. There were still people here. They were just hunkered down. They were terrified. They were hiding.

That was what they had been doing, too, for awhile there. Hunkering down, hiding. But they had to move, now, they had to do something other than just hiding.

"Where are we going to go?" Emma asked, suddenly, looking over at the other woman.

Jennifer frowned, furrowing her brows for a moment. "Well, according to the plan, we were supposed to go check on my ex-girlfriend back in Danvers. Personally, I'd really like to swing over there and see if I can find her."

"You mean, if she's not a zombie."

"Yeah," Jennifer glanced at her, smiling faintly. "If she's not a zombie. If she  _is_  a zombie, I'm not really inclined to save her, huh?"

"That makes sense." She swallowed, and leaned out the window again, hair whipping around her head. She waved at Aldis, where he sat driving the ambulance, and he gave her an odd look, but slowly lifted his hand, as well, as though waving back.

She grinned, and motioned at the tow truck, then at him, and tried to make hand symbols that indicated that he should follow them.

He looked even more bewildered than he had a moment before, as though she grown another head, or something. Finally, he reached down beside him, and picked up something that he held up, arching a brow. It was a cell phone.

She shrugged. Her phone hadn't worked for over a week, now.

Aldis sort of looked like he'd just had the same realization she had, and she could see his mouth, even from there, forming into one of his far too beloved swear words. She smirked faintly, and just waved at him again, and slid back into her seat, shaking her head. "I'm not sure if he got me or not."

"Write him a sign?" Jennifer suggested, with a grim grin as she skidded around another corner, fingers so tight on the steering wheel that her knuckles were white. "See if he understands you then. After all, he's your ex, right? Exes rarely get the signs unless you spell it out for them."

She snorted, and leaned over to kissed Jennifer's cheek. "You're adorable."

"Aren't I?" She grinned.

Digging in her backpack for a few minutes, Emma tugged out her notebook, and a sharpie, and scribbled out a sign that a moment later, she twisted in her seat to press against the back window of the tow truck, grinning.

_FOLLOW US, LOSERS, WE'LL LEAD YOU TO THE PROMISED LAND_

She saw Aldis' eyes flick to the sign, then a moment later, she saw him shaking his head, rolling his eyes, and knew that he'd gotten the message.

Flopping back into her seat, she said, "All right, Jennifer, babe, lead on."

 

+++

 

It had taken a long time - and Emma finally passing out in the passenger seat of the tow truck cab - that Jennifer had finally decided that it was time to actually stop for the night. She just didn't trust the areas that they were passing, and though her eyelids were sagging, she didn't really know what to expect on a night on the road. More zombies? Looters looking to steal their vehicles? Hard to say.

Still, they had to do something, and the nights were a lot colder out here now that they were out inside Emma's house, snug and warm.

It was Tom, she thought, that had set the fire, just a little thing, but it was going to keep them warmer, so that was important. None of them wanted to risk that a bigger fire might draw unwanted attention, but they were going to run watches, and at least it was going to be warm enough to cook some food on. That was something, at least.

Walking slowly into the circle of light cast by the campfire, Jennifer lowered herself to sit, quietly, on the log that they'd dragged over for a rough bench.

That is, she sat right next to Aldis.

He gave her a sharp look, drawing a slow, wary breath, and said, "Want me to go?"

"What? No." She shook her head, and picked up a stick, poking at the fire, stirring up the coals and watching as the sparks drifted up into the air. "Why would I want you to go?"

"...because you're dating my ex?"

She closed her eyes for a moment, and shifted slightly so that she could look at him properly, still poking at the fire, quietly. "Look, Aldis... just because we've both dated the same girl doesn't mean that we automatically have to be mortal enemies. You know we have the  _ability_  to be friends or something, right? Or... if not friends, at least allies. I mean, for god's sake, we're fighting through the same damn apocalypse together, aren't we?"

He snorted, quietly, and smiled as he looked down at the ground. "Yeah, that's true."

"Besides, I know that even if you don't love her anymore... you'd never let anything happen to her. Not now. Not ever."

"No. That's true."

"Toldja." She shrugged. "Maybe the fact that we've both loved the same girl means that maybe we'd get along better, don'tcha think? I mean, in a way... we have a bond, right? Slept with the same girl, both loved her in our own ways, didn't we? So maybe we got something here, we could... we could both take care of her in our own ways, you know?"

"Yeah, I can see that," he murmured, quietly.

They sat in silence for a long while, as she continued poking at the flames, watching the sparks.

Finally, she broke the silence again, and said, "So how long were you two together?"

He cleared his throat, and shifted slightly so that he could look into the flames themselves, looking embarrassed. "Ah... we got together when we were... almost seventeen. The whole thing ended when we were twenty three. She just... left. In the middle of the night. Never told me why, or anything, just... left."

She blinked, surprised. "Sorry, but that... doesn't really sound like her, you know?"

"Trust me," Aldis murmured, "I didn't think it sounded like her, either. I thought I knew her better than anyone else on the planet, but... I don't think I did. After all, anyway. I mean, if I had really known her, I don't think she would have left like that, would she have? But she did. Just... disappeared, left me alone. Never gave me an explanation, not even when I tried to get a hold of her, over and over, hoping that I would be able to ask her, and... no. Never."

"Ever wonder if maybe there was a reason for that?" She murmured.

"Oh, yeah. I tried to think of a thousand different reasons." he laughed, shaking his head. "All the time. I've thought up a thousand different reasons why maybe she would have done that."

"And what did you come up with, in the end?" She asked, considered him.

He shrugged, picking at his jeans. "I think... it was her writing. That did it, you know?"

"Her  _writing_  drove you apart?" She blinked at him, suspicious.

"Yeah." Aldis nodded, quietly. "Yeah. I mean, not that she wrote... that was her hobby, anyone is allowed to have their hobby, but..."

"I'm starting to think." Jennifer said, very quietly, "That writing is more than a _hobby_  for her."

"Yeah, I know, but..." He shrugged, clearing his throat. "I never really treated it that way, I guess. I figured it was her hobby, I know she liked doing it, but I was going to be a doctor, I was going to be able to support our family, hell, she was going to get to be a housewife and raise our kids and it was all going to be very... white picket fence. So I guess I figured, sure, if she wants to write stories, whatever. She can play with that, but I didn't understand why she took it so seriously when publishers, you know, didn't just eat it up. I mean, I sort of figured it would eventually happen, eventually she would get there, but it wasn't like she  _needed_  it."

"Maybe she  _does_  need it, Aldis." She murmured, and stood, squeezing his shoulder. "We're going as soon as it's dawn, all right?"

"Yeah," he nodded, clearing his throat. "I'll take first watch."

"Yeah, in a couple hours, we'll get Tom and Matthew to maybe take the next one from you... you all right with that?"

He glanced at the ambulance, and smirked slightly. "I sort of think they're sort of occupied right now."

She snorted, and shook her head. "Somehow I'm not surprised."

"Lucky them." Aldis said, sighing slightly, looking a little wistful.

"Feeling like the odd one out in our little, ah... love nest?" She asked, running her hand through her hair, glancing at the tow truck, where Emma slept, stretched across the bench seat.

"A little." He shrugged. "Maybe we'll find someone along our adventures. I mean, there are actual people out there, not just zombies. We might actually meet someone without a ravenous appetite, who thinks I'm not an ugly schlub."

Jennifer shook her head, and bent to squeeze his shoulder. "You're not so ugly of a schlub, Aldis."

"Oh, thanks, yeah, I totally appreciate that," he rolled his eyes, but he was grinning, all the same. Sort of nice to see someone with a good sense of humour.

Especially considering how the world was ending.

"G'night, Aldis." She said.

"Good night, Jennifer," he said, quietly. He sounded... wistful. She couldn't blame him, really, in the slightest. After all, he was sitting there, alone, by the fireplace, watching to make sure that no one attacked them, while Tom and Matthew made the ambulance rock - and oh yeah, apparently ambulances could rock - and she was heading back to the truck, where she was going to curl up with the girl that she loved - and yeah, she wasn't ashamed to say that, thank you, she really  _was_ willing to say that she loved her - and the girl that he, once, had also loved.

She couldn't really bring herself to feel guilty about it, though. She wanted to curl up with her girl, she wanted to sleep with Emma by her side, and she was going to.

Opening the driver's side door, Jennifer pulled herself up into the truck, closing the door carefully behind herself. Emma was laying across the bench seat, with the patchwork quilt that had been laying on her bed, before, now spread across her, part of it curled under her head like a rough pillow, blond hair spilling across the brightly coloured squares as she slept, mouth slightly open, eyelashes a sooty shadow on her cheeks. Jennifer crawled up beside her, carefully, lifting the quilt so that she could shift under it, trying to fit them both into the narrow space on the bench seat.

Emma woke, though not really fully, looking sort of confused. "Mmm... what... Jennifer?"

"Yeah, it's me," she whispered, shifting carefully so that her arms were curled around the other's waist, and their legs were sort of tangled together under the quilt. "It's okay, you can go back to sleep."

"Need a kiss, first," she murmured, sleepily, smiling at her.

"You're adorable. Needy, but adorable." She leaned forward, and gently kissed the other woman, her fingers light and gentle on the other's arm, and pressed her forehead lightly against hers. "Sleep, okay? We're going to have a lot of long nights ahead of us, and we might not be able to get a lot of sleep when we do."

"Yeah, yeah... that goes for you too, miss perfect," Emma murmured, quietly, and closed her eyes. "Sleep tight."

"Yes, ma'am." She smirked, kissing between her brows, and curling up close with her, quietly, and closed her eyes.

 

+++

 

"You know, I think these maps are written in a secret different language that no one is  _actually_  meant to understand," Emma said, frowning slightly as she turned the road map over so that she was looking at it upside down, wondering if maybe she was actually holding it wrong.

"They are. That language is called 'cartography'." Jennifer said, with a slight smirk, drumming her thumbs on the steering wheel.

"Ah ha, I knew there were nefarious schemes a foot." she grinned.

"Yeah... cartography is only a skill that you're taught in grade nine geography, I mean, it's not like it's something that literally kids can do without any trouble, or anything..." She continued, smirking slightly as she glanced at her. "I mean, no big deal, or anything."

"....sometimes, you make me question why I'm still with you." She rolled her eyes, and turned the map around again, frowning. "Which way are we travelling again?"

"East," she said.

"East." Emma repeated, and hummed, turning the map around and over until finally the little compass rose in the corner showed her that North was "left", which as far as she could figure, meant that the direction they were going was then ‘up’. This she  _sort_  of remembered from geography class. Vaguely. Possibly incorrectly. "Right. Okay. I've got this. And we are going... where again?"

"Massachusetts, remember?" She snorted.

"Right. I knew that. Stop treating me like I'm a kid, I'm smart, dammit." She smirked slightly, tapping her fingers on the map. "And where  _in_  Massachusetts are we going, exactly?"

"Danvers, Massachusetts."

"Right. I'm gonna find that on this map." She declared, firmly, and began searching the map, frowning slightly as she did.

"Sure thing, sweetheart," Jennifer snorted, looking really amused, as she looked out the windshield, then hesitated. "...is that a trailer park?"

"Where?" Emma fought with the paper for a moment, finally getting it down with a grunt of frustration and a few well chosen swear words, and looked out over it, down the street. "...no, that's not a trailer park, if it was, there would be more space between the trailers and stuff, and there would be trees and all the 'campground' stuff, that's more like... a storage place, or maybe a place that sells trailers or something."

"...so you're saying those are unattended trailers that are waiting for us to just take one and attach it to the back of the truck?" Jennifer asked, finally.

Emma blinked at her, then perked up. "Hey! Yeah!"

"Perfect."

The tow truck turned, pulling into the lot, and the ambulance followed along behind them, though Emma could see, peeking through the window, that Aldis looked completely confused by the fact that they were pulling in here. He parked behind them, and stepped out, frowning. "What's going on?"

"Trailers!" Emma crowed, scrambling out of the truck, grabbing her sawed off to hold tightly in her left hand as she spun around in a circle, grinning. She sort of felt like dancing in glee, and maybe if she wasn't really such a terrible dancer - and didn't have a cast on her broken leg - then maybe she would have done it. "A home on wheels! A home away from home! A place to keep us warm and safe _inside_  of something instead of being out and exposed to elements and zombies! It's the perfect plan, Jennifer and I figured it out a long time ago, we thought it was perfect, but now we  _have_  a trailer place, a place where we can find a trailer!"

"Yeah, and maybe you ought not to be dancing around in the mud in your cast, you idiot," Jennifer laughed as she rounded the truck, and slid her shoulder under the other's, lifting Emma up slightly. "Okay, Emma baby... try and lean on me instead of walking around like a hobbled little kid, okay?"

"I'll have you know that I hobble like a genius," she grinned, but she still slid her arm around the other's middle, and held tight to the other woman's waist. "All right, let's find us a trailer, huh?"

"Sure, let's find a trailer." Jennifer agreed.

"So... who stays with  _our_  vehicles, then?" Aldis asked, hands on his hips as he considered them, seriously. "I mean, in case either someone is here, or in case there are zombies coming?"

"Ah... you!" Emma said, cheerfully.

Aldis arched a brow.

"What, you're the paramedic, you're the one that had all those training courses on how to get vehicles through all sorts of weird situations. So you stay with the cars. You have that rifle, you can shoot in the air to warn us if you're not willing to shoot at the zombies. Hey. Matthew and Tom... you guys ready to come? Or do you want to stay here and watch the trucks? Oh, maybe they should stay here… there  _are_ two vehicles, and two of them…"

Tom shrugged, and pushed Matthew forward, slightly. "Go on, we’ll stay here and guard the cars. You go see if we can find a place where we can all live."

"Oh hell no, you two get to sleep in the back of the ambulance." She smirked, hobbling along with Jennifer for support. "After all, you two keep making the, well the - look, as it is, you make the ambulance start rocking," Emma grinned, and okay, yeah, she thought it was hilarious the way her former boss - because even if the world miraculously stopped ending tomorrow, there was no way she was going to go back to working at the cell phone store - flushed bright red and spluttered slightly. "So you can continue rocking the ambulance. We just need to find somewhere that's safe enough for, I dunno, living in. Place where we could cook would be awesome too..."  
  
"Right. We're wasting time." Jennifer tugged her bow out of the truck, holding it in the hand she wasn't holding Emma up with. "You two stay here. Axe any zombies you see, shoot in the air if you need us."  
  
"Try not to actually shoot  _us_ ," Aldis added, quickly, scooping up his own rifle.  
  
"That too," she agreed.  
  
Tom nodded, though he didn't look pleased by this turn of events. "All right, but make it quick. I don't like this out here, it's too... open."  
  
"Means you should be able to see them coming, sooner." Emma shrugged, resting her gun on her shoulder, and letting Jennifer help her away. "Open plains are the most defensible after cliffs and hills!"  
  
"I'm not sure I wanna know how you know that!" Tom called after them, and Emma just laughed, clutching tighter to Jennifer's waist as they stepped down a small rise, and walked into the actual sales lot proper.  
  
There were trailers spread out in every direction, sort of jumbled in tight to each other, the spaces between each merely a few feet wide. It was strange to see these behemoths of rvs and trailers and fifth wheels and camper trailers and the like all parked together like they were cars, as though they were in some bizarre Walmart parking lot for giants. They were overwhelmingly white, gleaming like perfect little pods that invoked the idea of travel and adventure just by their sheer nature. They poked in a few of them - they weren't locked, and Emma wondered if that was maybe an oversight on someone's part, or if that was normal in a lot this size - not locking them because who the bloody hell was going to have balls big enough to steal a  _trailer_? - but either she would declare them too hard to defend, or Jennifer would protest that there wasn't enough room for them to be not on top of each other, or Aldis would claim that the bathroom facilities were designed in such a way that they would be harder to keep clean and disinfected, during these trying apocalyptic times. Though this was something Emma certainly would never have never thought of herself, but considering the idea of an infected bathroom sounded absolutely disgusting, she was actually glad that he was there to have been able to make that point.  
  
As they rounded another corner, though, and she was about to beg off walking any more because her leg was starting to protest in agony, Emma spotted the trailer that she just _knew_  they needed.  
  
It wasn't white, for one thing.  
  
It was black, though just as shiny and new looking as all the others, and though it wasn't like one of the monster boats that had left her wondering how a vehicle even as strong as their tow truck was supposed to haul it, this particular trailer seemed a fairly decent size. It was one of the low profile models, less showy and flashy than a lot of the others, and the moment she saw it, she knew.   
  
"There's our new home." She said, confidently.  
  
Of course, the others didn't feel quite the conviction  _she_  felt, however, because Aldis arched a brow and said, "It looks like the unholy abomination child of a zamboni and a hearse," and Jennifer said, with a slight huff, " _Home_? What are we, now, post-apocalyptic trailer trash?"  
  
All the same, they headed over, and when Emma tugged open the door, leaned inside, and called, "You have  _got_  to see this, this is bad ass!" the others apparently just decided that it was better that she get her way, and didn't argue.   
  
They left Emma there, as they headed back to retrieve the truck, so that they could pull it out of there and get back on the road, and she hobbled through the trailer itself, poking in cupboards and under the beds, grinning like a loon the whole way. It wasn't perfect - it was a fucking house on wheels, of course it wasn't going to be perfect - but she thought it was going to work out all right. Hell, the teeny tiny bathroom even had a teeny tiny stacked washer and dryer in it, and god, if they didn't need to do laundry. The fridge was almost even real size, which was good if they were going to be keeping food for five people in it, and under the refrigerator was a small propane powered generator that apparently vented under the trailer itself. Smart, for when they needed to keep the fridge cold out there, power was beginning to become a hot commodity. She had already decided that the only real "bedroom" belonged to her and Jennifer - it had a queen sized bed back there that literally took up the whole space, then had shelving units and drawers and cupboards built all around the outsides of it, so that if you wanted to get into any of the storage, you would literally have to climb onto the bed. It had one of those heavy sliding doors, which she supposed would have to do for privacy, but it was still better than the truck. There was a bunk, in the front, over top of the dining table and benches, and the benches themselves looked like they would pull out to make a little double bed. She supposed the boys could fight over who got the bunk and who got the pull outs.  
  
It wasn't perfect, but it was clean, still all plastic wrapped, and if they were going to have to live out the end of the world, couldn't they at least do it in some modicum of comfort, dammit?  
  
There were voices outside, and Emma grinned, darting to the door, grinning to greet her friends.  
  
Only it wasn't her friends, approaching, it was a pair of men dressed in scruffy, dirty clothing, talking to each other. Eyes wide, she quickly backed back into the trailer, holding her breath as she tried to hear them, and hoped that the strangers hadn't seen her.   
  
They could just be anybody. All likelihood, they were just perfectly normal people that happened to be walking through the trailer sales lot, and she knew that. Hell, maybe they were looking for shelter the same way that they had been. The problem for her was that this was the end of the fucking world, and though they had arranged themselves into a safe little unit and were going to take care of each other, she just couldn't really afford to trust strangers. If this had been any other day, any other time, she would have just ignored them, and gone about her regular life. But it wasn't, and perfectly reasonable people might do absolutely terrible things, under the circumstances.  
  
Emma found herself gripping the stock of her sawed off, tighter and tighter, and wondered to herself if maybe she could be one of those perfectly reasonable people doing absolutely terrible things.  
  
 _"The best defense is a creative offense,"_  her father had said, when she was still little. She could remember sitting on the kitchen counter as he worked on refilling shells. She'd thought, back then, that it was perfectly normal to fill shot gun shells at the kitchen counter, and it wasn't until her mother and her had moved to Portland that she had discovered differently. But he was working on filling shells with rock salt, and when she had asked him what that was for, he had grinned at her, ruffled her hair, and explained. _"See, most of the time, you don't want to kill the people you're shooting at, pumpkin. You just want them to get away from you and yours, so you have to find a way to get them to away. So what you do is make 'em hurt, but not die. Salt in the wound works real good for that, so... salt bullets."_    
  
She'd thought it was diabolical at the time.  
  
But three weeks ago, before they had been forced out of Portland by swarms of flesh eating zombies, Emma had stood at her kitchen counter, and loaded up rock salt shells.  
  
She dug through her backpack for a moment, pulling several out, and exchanging the real bullets in the gun for the salt ones.   
  
She could wait it out, wait to see if maybe they just passed by...  
  
"I thought I saw something up here," one of the men was saying, loud enough that if they really thought someone was hiding, then they would have broadcasted that they were coming. Was that what they were trying to do, maybe? Shit. "We should probably check it out."  
  
 _Just keep walking, just keep walking..._  
  
"Black trailer, I think someone's in it." The other agreed.  
  
Fuck.  
  
Now she  _had_  to do something.  
  
Emma took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and whispered, mostly to herself,   
  
"You better have been right about this, daddy."  
  
Then, shot gun resting on her shoulder, she reopened the door, and stepped out onto the metal steps that led down to the ground. Trying to sound casual and calm - though she was feeling neither - she said, "Hello. Can I help you with something?"  
  
The men froze.   
  
She could have let them keep walking. Probably should have. But if the others had arrived with the truck and these men had still been here, and if they had bad motives...  
  
Yeah, and based on the slow grins that took over their faces, she thought that maybe their motives weren't quite as pure as they might have been.   
  
"Heya, little lady," one of the men said, as he stepped closer. "Whatcha doing out here, all by yourself?"  
  
"Waiting for a line like that, apparently." She rolled her eyes. "Seriously, though, can I help you with anything? Directions out of the area, perhaps?"  
  
"You know, it really ain't safe out here for a little lady like you," the other man said, stepping closer, still grinning. They weren't just dirty, either, she realized as they stepped closer. They also reeked of alcohol, and she cursed herself for having gotten into this situation. Assholes in an apocalypse was bad enough. Drunk assholes in an apocalypse was asking for trouble, because while they might have a shred of self-preservation left when they were sober, that all pretty much went right out the window when they got drunk.  
  
"I think I'm plenty safe," she said, tightening her grip on the stock.  
  
"You sure about that, little lady?" He leered, reaching out as though to try and grab her, and Emma acted without even really thinking, just jerking the gun forward, and aiming the sawed off straight at his face.   
  
"Take another step, and you're going to regret it, buddy."  
  
The man froze for a moment, then turned to grin at his friend, snickering. "Oooh, she's got a  _gun_ , Brent, see that? She's got a  _gun_."  
  
He laughed, loudly. "Oooh, is she gonna shoot you, then? Gonna be a big bad killer and shoot him? Come on, princess, go ahead and be a big bad killer, shoot the big scary man..."  
  
Naturally, she knew that they didn't want to be shot. (Who does?) But she also knew that it was supposed to be somewhat intimidating, that they weren't scared of her shooting them, so she'd back down, because really, they had a point. What little lady carried around a sawed off and knew what to do with it?  
  
Well, she did.  
  
Emma fired.  
  
The guy that had been reaching for her was shot straight in the chest, and even though it wasn't buckshot, it was still a sawed off at short range, and he was thrown backwards, slamming hard into the outer wall of the trailer right beside her black one. He let out a cry of pain, eyes wide and horrified at the realization that the 'little lady' had actually fucking _shot_  him, and he touched his chest with a shaky hand, gagging slightly. The sound of the rifle shot seemed to crack around them, echoing over and over in the narrow spaces, ringing through the lines of metal vehicles, as though it was coming back to get them like a concussive force, ringing in her ears despite her being used to the sound.  
  
His friend spun to look up at her, rage on his face, and roared, "You fucking little bitch!"  
  
Emma primed the gun again, the spent salt shells dropping to hit the step, then plinging as they dropped to the sand below the trailers. Lifting it back up, she held it, unwaveringly, in one hand, aiming right in the second asshole's face. "It's rock salt to the chest. Gonna sting like a bitch, but isn't going to kill him. However, if I hit you with this in the  _face_ , it probably _will_  kill you. Maim, if nothing else. So if you were smart, you would pick up the pieces of your friend, and  _fuck off_  before this  _little lady_  ventilates your face."  
  
They looked like they were seriously debating whether it was worth a shot of rock salt to the face - it wasn't, she could assure them of that - when an arrow suddenly whistled between the two of them, embedding itself in the ground, and Jennifer called, loudly, "We can probably find a few other places to put holes in them too, don'tcha think, babe?" and they were running.  
  
Pell mell between the trailers, racing as fast as their feet would take them, just trying to get away from these crazy women with their weapons and not really caring where they had to go to get away.  
  
A moment later, Jennifer scrambled up the metal steps to Emma's side, brows furrowed in concern. "Are you all right?"  
  
"Yeah, m'fine." She smiled faintly at her. "They sort of got the hint that I wasn't interested when I shot them."  
  
Jennifer snorted, and kissed her forehead, curling Emma close to her chest. "Let's never let that happen again, okay?"  
  
"Deal." She murmured.

  
+++

  
Aldis tapped his fingers on the steering wheel of the ambulance as he drove, humming along with the song on the radio. Morgan and his classical station were still coming through, though not as clear as they used to, sort of crackley popping. It was still  _there_ though, and that was a comfort, against the silence of everything else.  
  
They'd been on the road for three weeks now, which seemed ridiculous, out of context. It should have taken three  _days_  to drive to Massachusetts, from Portland, it wasn't like this was a different country  they were trying to get to, here. But it is very easy to say what things  _should_  be when things weren't that way.  
  
The simple fact was that it wasn't always easy going. There were vehicles abandoned on the road, and while he would love to say that it was just because they'd run out of gas and been forced to walk - and there were clearly a lot of those - there were also a lot of cars with broken out windows, blood on the seats, some because they had smashed into another car, and sometimes for unknown causes that he didn't really want to think about. Progress had been especially slow the first day because they had been faced with traffic trying to get either in or out of the city, the second because of the trailer and the paranoia that had overcome them on trying to make sure they weren't overcome by more drunk assholes, and the third, because they kept stopping to pick through the metaphorical carcasses of the cars on the sides of the road. It just kept going the same way, now, over and over, until a trip that should have taken days had been stretched out into painful weeks. At least they were getting things they needed, as they travelled. They had so far gathered guns, ammunition, baseball bats, food, water, and on several occasions, cans of gasoline. At least it should keep them going, though Aldis really didn't like to imagine what might have happened to whomever had been driving that vehicle before it had, for whatever reason, stopped.  
  
Jennifer was concerned with getting to her ex-girlfriend quickly, yes, and he would love to be out of the wilds, away from the open road where anything could happen, but Aldis personally supported this 'taking their time' plan. They didn't really need to rush, did they, if they didn't know what lay ahead of them?  
  
"Where are we?" Tom asked, as he leaned in through the entrance from the back of the ambulance to the cab.  
  
"I dunno." Aldis shrugged.  
  
"What do you mean, you don't know?" He demanded.  
  
"Well, let's see, I'll just check my GPS.... oh wait, that needs to connect to the cell phone networks to work, and the cell phone networks are all down." He said, sarcastically, rolling his eyes. "So when I see the next sign that tells me where we are, I'll let you know."  
  
Tom huffed, and squirmed his way into the cab, flopping down in the passenger seat. "It's just that if we're going to Massachusetts..."  
  
"I know, this is the longest drive I've ever had to anywhere ever before, too. I’ve never been stuck in a vehicle this long before. How do people  _do_  roadtrips?" He muttered, and reached up with one hand to rub at the space between his eyebrows. He was one of those guys that didn't really eat a whole lot, but managed to keep going through a sheer massive amount of coffee and energy drinks. While he'd been able to keep up something similar to his incredibly unhealthy caffeine intake while at Emma's house, since they had been on the road, coffee and energy drinks had been few and far between, and his head was starting to inform him of its displeasure that he was cutting it off from its flow. The other doctors-in-training in his program joked that they needed to just set up an IV drip for caffeine, and though he had been knocking back caffeine pills they normally kept in the ambulance for treatment of migraines and headaches, he was starting to think an IV drip was a good way to go. "I just want to  _get_  somewhere, get out of the fucking van, and be done with the driving. I am really getting sick of driving."  
  
"Want me to take over for awhile?" Tom asked, frowning.  
  
"Maybe in a bit," he said, amenable to the idea, even though he had been reluctant to hand over the keys to his ambulance before.   
  
"Right, just let me know." He shrugged.  
  
"Where's Matthew?"   
  
"Sleeping in the back," Tom glanced over his shoulder, into the back, as though to confirm that he was there. "He's been really exhausted the last few days. I don't think travelling really agrees with him."  
  
"Not sure it really agrees with any of us," Aldis sighed.  
  
He passed by a sign that read "Welcome to Roseland, Indiana!" in bright, cheerful colours, and thought to himself that it seemed ironic, considering that everything looked just as it ever had, but everything  _else_  was so different. It just looked like they were being welcomed into some kind of storybook world, where everything was still all right, and the world wasn't actually ending.  
  
"Looks like we're in Roseland, Indiana." He smirked.  
  
"Yes, thank you, genius, I noticed," Tom snarked back, then fell silent. "...is it just me, or did we walk into Silent Hill?"  
  
"Yeah." He murmured, quietly.  
  
The streets of Roseland were completely empty. There were cars sitting on the side of the road, yes, but there was no one in any of them, and all of the windows were dark. In a couple of the small towns they had passed through, there had been people on the streets of them, who had waved at them, some of them even running after them, as though trying to get them to stop. That was why they tended to power through towns, just in case any of these people trying to stop them were actually zombies - they didn't want to chance that they would just eat them if they stopped, even if they had stopped with the best of intentions. But here, there were no people, no movement except for the single stop light in the middle of town, that swayed, silently, in the breeze.  
  
Ahead of them, the tow truck and trailer pulled to a stop, and the doors opened, Jennifer and Emma both stepping out, holding their individual weapons of choice. Aldis parked a little behind them, frowning slightly.  
  
"What are we doing, stopping?" He asked, mostly rhetorically.  
  
Tom reached into the back of the ambulance, shaking Matthew's shoulder. "Matthew, hey, come on. Wake up.  _Wake up_!"  
  
"Wha' is it?" Matthew asked, blearily, as he leaned through the doorway, hair sticking every which direction, lines on his face from the sheets.  
  
"Not sure," Aldis frowned, and grabbed his favourite axe before he opened the driver's door and stepped out of the vehicle. "Hey! Why are we stopping?"  
  
Emma nodded her head towards the store to their left. "Hardware store. Figured we may as well get some supplies while we're here."  
  
"Right." He frowned slightly, and nodded, looking back into the cab of the ambulance. "You two good to protect the fort?"  
  
"We got it," Tom nodded, picking up the rifle that Aldis kept between the seats, laying it across his lap.  
  
"Good," he nodded, and headed over with the girls as they headed into the hardware store, which sat with door open, swaying slightly in the breeze. He pulled it shut behind him, which made the bell over the door jingle, brightly, and when they both looked at him sharply, Aldis shrugged. "That way we'll hear if anyone else comes in."  
  
"Hm." Jennifer frowned, but nodded, and kept walking, arrow head sweeping over the spaces as she looked for threats.  
  
"Why are there no people anywhere?" Aldis murmured, quietly. It seemed strange, to talk at a normal volume, now. There was no sounds. At all. There were no cars driving past, no radio playing banal music in the background, no cash registers ringing, no computers humming, no one having idle chit chat, there wasn't even the dull background thrum of overhead fluorescent lights simply being  _on_. There was no sound but their breathing, their footsteps on the old hardwood floor, and he'd never realized just how deep the silence was until it was absolute.

"I don't know," Emma admitted. "But I think I can tell you where a whole  _lot_  of the people in this town are."

"Really?" He looked up, startled.

“Yeah,” she said, grimly, and pointed in the direction of the back of the store.

Emma had pushed the door at the back of the hardware store open, and there was a pile of bodies. The stench was absolutely palpable, strong enough that Aldis swore he could taste it in the back of his mouth. He gagged, pressing his hand over his nose and mouth. He’d thought that being nearly finished medical school and routinely dissecting medical cadavers had steeled him against this sort of reaction, but apparently being desensitized to dead bodies did nothing to help him be prepared for the scent of the  _en masse_ decay of human bodies.

“Oh god,” he croaked, examining the scene with squinted eyes. “Well, someone had to have  _done_  this. Bodies don’t just spontaneously stack themselves up.”

“Yeah, but who is…” Jennifer hesitated, as though looking for the right word, and settled on: “ _Sick_  enough to do this?”

“Maybe it’s not sick,” Emma offered, swallowing heavily. “Maybe it’s to prevent the spread of infection, or to clean up the streets so that there would be  _localized_ dead people instead of bodies scattered  _everywhere_ …”

“Except that in the middle of the damn  _zombie apocalypse_ , who takes the time to move what very likely could be  _infected bodies_?!” Aldis protested, eyes watering as he wondered if there was any polite way to say ‘can we get the hell away from the precariously stacked tower of rotting human flesh?’ as he did. “Somebody in a hazmat suit, maybe, but I think  _they_  might have better things to do. The infection risk would be high, and even a layman has to know  _that_! So who would stack bodies? One of the infected?!”

“No way,” Jennifer shook her head. “You’ve seen it. They just  _eat_. Everything. People, garbage,  _dirt_ , whatever they can get their hands on, if a zombie had stacked up these people, they would have  _eaten_  them, they can’t control – “

“There’s someone there!” Emma interrupted, pointing with her crutch, down the alley.

All three of them spun to look where she pointed, to see a dirty, wild looking man at the mouth of the alley behind the hardware store. Having apparently heard them, he froze, eyes wide, and dropped the corpse that he had been dragging along by the arms. Holding up his hands, he howled, “Stay away from me!”

Jennifer reluctantly lowered her bow – which had been up and aimed at the stranger the moment she’d seen movement – and called, “We’re not going to hurt you!”

“I know!”

None of them had been expecting  _that_  answer.

Brows furrowed, Emma called, “Then what did you mean?”

The man licked his lips quickly, nervously, hands still up in the air, but now it seemed more like surrender than a warning. “You should stay away from me, I’m not safe to be around. I’m infected.”

Aldis hissed. “I  _told_  you it was one of the infected stacking bodies!”

Emma raised her gun just a little, still leaning heavily on the crutches she had hobbled into the store with, and infinitely grateful that she had them. “No offense, or nothing, but I’m not sure I believe you. None of the other infected… talk.”

“Well, there’s clearly something  _wrong_  with me,” his eyes flicked furtively over the alley, looking for a safe exit. “I am  _infected_. I – I was like  _them_ , at first.”

“Is that possible?” Jennifer said, lowly. “For a zombie to become…  _un_ -undead?”

“Well, the zombies may not actually be  _dead_ , remember…” Aldis breathed.

“Isn’t that the  _definition_  of zombies, though?” She demanded.

“ _Traditionally_ ,” Emma murmured, eyes – and gun – still trained on the alleged infected. “But we talked about this before, remember? They said on the news that this infection spread as a disease, so maybe they aren’t really  _dead_  zombies, they’re just sick people. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that someone could have developed immunities or found a cure or something, is it?”

Aldis hesitated, then admitted, “ _No_ … though the chances are billions to one.”

“Good enough odds for me,” she shrugged, and called, “Hey, look… we just wanna talk to you. Think we could manage that, maybe? Our buddy here, he’s a doctor. He could get you checked up, make sure you’re okay now?”

The man hesitated, clearly wary, then demanded, “Promise you won’t shoot me?”

“You don’t try to eat us, we don’t shoot you,” Jennifer called back.

A moment of silence, then he nodded, jerkily. “Fair enough.”


	5. Chapter 5

 The man, who explained that his name was George Clooney, had holed himself up in the town pharmacy, and it was there that he lead them. He was still skittish, and though he let Aldis check out his physical health, he would jump when the other man moved too quickly.

 

As he worked, though, George talked.

“It was awful,” he was saying, now. “Like I had absolutely no control over myself and what I was doing. I mean, I knew  _what_  I was doing, I could still think and feel and I knew what I was doing, but I couldn’t… not. Not do it, I mean. It was like someone else was in control of my body, only… not. Because I was the one telling myself to move, I just couldn’t seem to tell myself to  _stop_  moving. I just… I was so goddamn  _hungry_ , you know? I could eat for days – and I  _did_  – and I still felt like I was dying of starvation. I just couldn’t get enough.”

“But the human body can’t just eat for days,” Tom frowned. He was standing in the front door of the pharmacy, shot gun cradled in his arms as he glanced away from peering out at the street through the metal gate that once upon a time had been pulled down to prevent theft. “That’s why bulimic super models sometimes die when they binge and bust their guts.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” George shook his head. “I just… ate. All the time.”

“What did you eat?” Aldis asked, gently pressing on the man’s stomach, brows furrowed.

“Anything.” George shrugged, not meeting their eyes, looking down at the young doctor in training’s hands as they worked, instead. “Whatever I could get my hands on. I – I’m pretty sure I actually ate some people, too, though I don’t really remember that. I’ve blacked some of it out. I didn’t  _want_  to do it, you gotta believe me, I  _never_  would have – would have… I just couldn’t  _stop_  it…?!”

The little pharmacy was quiet, no one wanting to be the first to voice their reaction to that.

Finally, Emma broke the silence by switching the topic entirely. “So how come you _stopped_  being all zombie desperate to eat everything?”

“Well, I’m not sure… exactly…” George suddenly bolted to his feet, and Aldis rocked back on his heels to get out of his way. George didn’t even seem to notice that his abrupt bolt to his feet had made everyone with weapons in hands lift them to aim at him, again. Hard to blame them, when he was a self-professed former zombie. Instead, George hurried behind the counter where the pharmacist used to work, and returned with a small plastic tub. “I got in here, not sure how, I guess I must have been looking for something to eat, anyway, I must have been really messed up, because when I… when I woke up, there were pills and bottles everywhere and I sort of think I had been eating my way through the drugs. I’m lucky I’m not dead.”

“You’re not kidding.” Aldis agreed, scoffing slightly.

“But these… these are what I had been eating… before. Right before I passed out and woke up… me again.”

“What are they?” Emma asked, leaning forward.

“Seroquel.” Aldis whistled.

“Is that supposed to mean something to us?” Jennifer frowned, fingers playing up and down the string of her bow.

“It’s an anti-psychotic.” He shrugged, opening the container to check the amount of pills still contained within. “Usually prescribed at lower levels for bipolar patients, and at high doses for schizophrenics. There also used to be a thriving street trade for it, because if your brain chemicals  _weren’t_  seriously unbalanced enough to require an anti-psychotic medication to balance it out, it would get you really messed up. Did you just take these the one time, or…?”

George shook his head. “When I first woke up again, more… you know…  _myself_ , I thought I’d somehow magically gotten fixed or something, and tried to leave. But the longer I went without the pills, the more I started to get… like them, again. Wanting to eat  _everything_. So I – I came back here, and I… I ate a handful of them. And I could  _feel_  it fading… it was so…” He heaved a heavy sigh, and threw up his hands. “Terrifying. But I’m myself again, so… so I just take two of them every twelve hours or so, and it seems to have worked? I’m not eating everything in sight anymore, anyway.”

“But what will you do when you run out of pills?”? Matthew asked, brows furrowed.

George hesitated. “I got a plan for that.”

That plan, as it turned out, was a revolver.

He set it on the counter with great reverence, and said, “I was never really much for guns, before. Still ain’t. Lucky there really ain’t many zombies round these parts anymore, because this thing probably wouldn’t be much for protection. But when I run out of pills… before I lose my mind again, before I become one of those _beasts_  again… I’m gonna put a bullet in my own brain.”

“George…” Emma tried.

“Oh, don’t bother trying to talk me out of it,” he shook his head, and tucked the gun back behind the counter where he’d hidden it. “You don’t know what it’s like, being infected, what it’s like to lose who you are and to be forced to watch yourself turn into a ravenous  _beast_. I don’t want to be a zombie, you understand that? So I’ll do my bit, do my penance, take care of the poor suckers that didn’t get lucky like me, put them to some kinda rest, then, when I run out of the stuff that’s keeping me a goddamn  _human_ , then my last action as a man will be to kill one last zombie before the bastard has a chance to take over my body again.”

Emma drew a long, shuddering breath, then nodded. “I understand.”

He sighed, relieved. “Thought you might.”

 

+++

  
  
" - situation has gotten much worse, since the power went out," Morgan's voice, smooth and comforting even if the words he was conveying weren't, spilled from the little battery powered radio where it sat, in a place of honour, on top of the defibrillation machine in the back of the ambulance.   
  
On the little gurney, which wasn't really much of a bed even though it was being used as one, Tom and Matthew lay, the former with his chest pressed against the latter's back as he held him loosely, their legs sort of tangled together as they lay under a quilt that had once been spread across the guest bed in Emma's little house that they'd had to leave behind. Tom's hand was pressed against Matthew's chest, his fingers splayed out as though trying to cover as much territory as he could, at once, and though his every breath made the other's hair ruffle, they both lay there in silence, listening to the radio and Morgan's report of the devastation. They still didn't know  _where_  he got his information from, but if it was accurate, then the world was falling further and further into shambles.  
  
"Sounds pretty awful out there, doesn't it?" Tom asked, at last, pressing his forehead to the back of Matthew's neck, drawing in a deep breath.  
  
"You know I'm not actually gay, right?" The other said, in response, which wasn't really a response to the question that Tom had posed, in the slightest, but since it had been mostly rhetorical, that wasn't really that big of a deal. All the same, it  _did_  seem fairly random.  
  
Random enough, in fact, that Tom snorted, and shook his head slightly. "Neither am I."  
  
"...right." Matthew murmured, then shifted slightly, trying to get on his back so that he could actually see Tom's face. It didn't really work, as they were laying on a one person gurney as it was, so he sighed, and flopped back to where he was, before, and just said, "But I mean... if neither of us is gay, and we're not, you know, into guys, are we just doing this because the only two girls we know are both lesbians and sort of into, you know, each other?"  
  
Tom snorted, and pressed his forehead to the back of the other's neck, again. "Answer me this, scarecrow - is that why  _you're_  doing this?"  
  
Matthew blinked, then shook his head. "No."  
  
"Well, there's your answer."  
  
They were silent for another few minutes more, as Morgan continued to talk on the radio about the state of the country, then Matthew spoke up again. "It's just that I'm laying here, being the little spoon for another man - and believe me, that is something I thought I would  _never_  say, unless I got really, really pissed off at a customer in my store and snapped and killed someone and ended up in jail with a cellmate named Mick the Knife, or something - and I'm having a complete existential crisis. A gay meltdown. And you know what? It doesn't even fucking matter, does it? I mean, sure... I can freak out and have the big gay panic and what does it matter? Our country is fucked, it's not like we're going to run into random bullies that will hate me because of it, and voting for same-sex marriage rights isn't really gonna be a problem again,  _ever_ , is it? Cause, I mean, if nothing else, the government will have to be rebuilt, and our girls, they're serious survivors, so they're probably going to be the ones remaking the government and stuff, and hey, they're lesbians, so same-sex is probably the way to go, let's be honest, frankly, I'd be more worried for the straight couples, but..."  
  
"Do you always talk so much when you're freaking out?" Tom asked, arching a brow.  
  
"...generally." He admitted, at last.  
  
"I'm going to have to learn ways to shut you up, aren't I?" He sighed, heavily, as though very put upon by the fact that Matthew talked a lot. "Do you shut up if people shove things in your mouth?"  
  
Matthew huffed, and tried to shift around to face him again. "I tend to  _bite_  things that people shove in my mouth, asshole."  
  
"Sure you do," Tom grinned at him, deviously, and finally allowed Matthew to manage to squirm himself around - then the moment the other was on his back, he braced himself over him, a hand pressed to the gurney on either side of his shoulders. Looking down at him, he said, seriously, "Listen to me, okay? The whole world is going completely to shit, right? People are eating other people, there are zombies, and I've had to kill someone that was probably a perfectly normal, reasonable person before they got infected and I had to put an axe through their forehead, okay? So at the moment, I don't give a flying  _fuck_  about whether this is gay or queer or whatever the fuck you want to call it, and I don't give a shit about what any other person thinks about us. I am sleeping with you because I fucking _want_  to, and I sort of got the impression that  _you_  wanted to sleep with me, too. So fuck society, it's already pretty fucked anyway, we can do whatever the hell we want to do. So yeah, sure, we're gay. Together. You got a problem with that? Cause if you do..."  
  
"...no, I don't really... it's just sort of..." Matthew fumbled.  
  
"You're still worried about assholes that would give you a hard time when the whole fucking world is destroyed?"  
  
He looked down, flushed, playing with the hem of the quilt wrapped around them, that they had seemed to have gotten themselves twisted up in, now. "No, it's just... all I can think about is my parents, you know? My parents are... were.... I mean, I love them, but they were kinda... religious nutbars? They're really homophobic, really anti-gay marriage and everything, and... when I was seventeen, I was doing dishes with my mom one day. She was washing, I was drying. And suddenly she turned to me and said... and I quote, cause I really remember this... 'if you were gay, you know we'd disown you, right?' And I mean... that stuck with me. No matter what, how do you forget your mom just casually telling you that she doesn't love you enough that your being something she doesn't like means that she would just...  _abandon_  you?"  
  
"So don't tell your parents," Tom shrugged, not quite seeing the problem there, clearly, though his brows were furrowed in displeasure.  
  
"Not really an issue anymore, is it? They're dead." He sighed, closing his eyes. "I mean, probably, anyway. I called all of their phones, work, home, cell, no answer, and when we swung by their house, they weren't there. My dad never would have left in a zombie apocalypse without his Bible, and it was still sitting on his desk. So they're dead. Or might as well be, when it comes to me, because we're leaving Portland now, and I'll probably never see them again."  
  
"So... really no problem, right?"  
  
Matthew lifted his eyes, finally, looking up at Tom, frowning slightly. "It's more than  _that_ , Tom, it's... it's thinking about the fact that I have been telling myself for half of my life that I can't be with a guy, cause if I was, I'd be kicked out of the family if they found out, or if I didn't want to be kicked out, I'd have to keep him hidden for our entire relationship, and you know how hard it would be to never be able to tell my mom that I was happy with someone, or ask my dad's blessing for getting married because - because I'd be getting married to someone I knew they wouldn't approve of, or - or anything."  
  
Tom furrowed his brows at him, for a moment, then finally said, "So what your're saying is that you  _are_  gay, but that you just didn't want to  _call_  yourself gay? Cause if that's all it is..."  
  
He huffed, hair ruffling around his face. "It's so much more complicated than  _that_ , Tom, it's..."  
  
"It's that you're terrified of being exactly the thing your parents feared you would become?" He guessed.  
  
Matthew sighed softly, and nodded.  
  
"Not sure that's such a bad thing, mate." Tom said, and lowered himself so that he was settled half on top of Matthew, pinning him quite effectively down to the bed, and reached up to brush his hair off of his face, quietly. Finally, he said, "Look, all of us are scared of one of two things happening to us, right? Either becoming the person that our parents warned us about, or becoming our parents. And I'm sorry, but based on what you've told me... I'm glad you're becoming the person your parents warned you about, instead. Otherwise the internalized self hate would really start to get to me, and god, I'd rather you  _not_  be a big ball of stress and pain, okay?"  
  
"S'not like it would be directed at you." Matthew muttered, quietly, almost rebelliously.  
  
"Yeah fucking right," he snorted. "I'm the one fucking you, ain't I?"  
  
" _Tom_..." he groaned.  
  
"What, don't like me describing it that way? Fine. I'm yer boyfriend, ain't I?" Tom challenged him, jaw set, eyes bright as he looked at him.  
  
Matthew flushed, and sort of spluttered, ducking his head. "Well, I'm not sure - I don't think - not sure that's the right word..."  
  
"Bullshit it ain't." He rolled his eyes, and gripped Matthew's jaw harder than was strictly necessary, turning his head towards him so that he could kiss him, firmly, bruising hard. Finally, he pulled back, just as Matthew was starting to gasp for air, and said, "I don't fucking kiss dudes I'm not dating, Matthew Gray Gubler. It may be something you're not used to, but you're my fucking boyfriend, ain't you, unless you wanna be my partner or something, and we're  _together_. Two guys in an exclusive sexual relationship that probably has more fucking feelings involved than either of us really feels comfortable getting into, and whether you want to call that gay or not, you're my goddamn  _lover_ , and I  _care_  about you, and can we never have this conversation again?"  
  
He laughed, sort of breathlessly, and nodded. "O-okay."  
  
" _God_ , finally." He groaned, and flopped back again, shaking his head.

 

+++

 

“It doesn’t feel right, leaving George back there, all by himself.”

Jennifer glanced over at Emma, startled. It had been weeks since they had last seen the former zombie, they’d left him behind because he  _asked_  to be left behind. He wanted to be alone, to try and  _live_. At least for now. Still. The blond looked haunted, eyes looking very faraway, instead of on the road that stretched empty and barren before them. Reaching over, she squeezed the other woman’s hand, and once she made sure she had Emma’s attention, reminded her, “That’s what he wanted.”

“I know,” Emma agreed. “But it still doesn’t feel right.”

“We couldn’t force him to come along,” she pointed out. “And even if we  _had_  managed to convince him to come along, what would we have done, when he ran out of medication? Kind of hard to shoot someone that’s part of your group, even if he  _is_  a zombie.”

“We could get the meds in every pharmacy along the way,” she said, stubbornly. “Aldis already cleaned out the pharmacy in that last town…”

“And when  _that_  medication runs out?” Jennifer said, still squeezing Emma’s fingers. “or when it gets so old it’s not really potent anymore?”

Emma heaved a heavy sigh and leaned back in her seat in the front of the truck, closing her eyes. “You’re right, I know you’re right, it’s just… it’s not  _fair_.”

“No,” she agreed, softly, shifting her hands so that their fingers were laced together, now. “No, it’s not.”

They’d been driving since forever, it felt like, the two of them in this truck, the guys in the ambulance. At night, Tom and Matthew usually stayed in the other vehicle – citing a need for their privacy – and the girls reluctantly let Aldis come over to sleep in the trailer, though they always made sure that he stayed far away from their own bed. Emma still stubbornly held him at arms length, unwilling to rehash their old relationship, but she admitted now that they did need his help, and he had been, well,  _respectful_. Hadn’t tried to convince her to come back to him, hadn’t made any disparaging remarks about herself and Jennifer and their new relationship  _they_  had forged. He still didn’t seem  _happy_  about it, but things had changed. There were, as Matthew had waxed poetic one night after they had raided a remarkably still intact liquor store, and he’d been completely smashed, there were precious few people left out there, so there were no enemies anymore. They might have their reasons to hate each other, but if they were going to survive the end of the world, maybe they ought to try to work together.

“You know, I wish we’d met under different circumstances.”

Emma glanced at her, startled. “Really?”

“Uh,  _yeah_ ,” Jennifer laughed. “I don’t usually meet girls in the midst of the damn apocalypse and have to worry about whether or not we’re going to be eaten by zombies before I actually get to take her out on a proper  _date_.”

Laughing, Emma lifted her hand, and kissed Jennifer’s knuckles. “We had one, remember? Ladies night at the bar? Besides, I will have you know that I didn’t need any  _dates_.”

“Hey, dates are good,” she laughed. “I will have you know that had the zombie apocalypse not struck and rendered life as we know it null and voice, I would have taken you on a series of better and better dates, until you would have wondered what you’d ever have done without me. It would have been  _romantic_ , and trust me, Emma, you would have liked it. I’m only sorry that I couldn’t give you that properly.”

“I’ve managed,” Emma smirked. “Sides, all things considered… I’m glad we met how we did.”

Jennifer let out an explosive burst of laughter, looking away from the empty road to look incredulously at Emma. “You’re kidding, right? You’re happy about the zombie apocalypse?”

“No!” She snorted, grinning as she leaned back, her casted leg braced on the dashboard. Aldis said that he figured he could take it off in about a week, or so. Had been on a couple months, now, and she was itching to get it off and be on her own steam, now, without limping or hobbling along with crutches. About time, she thought, since though the trip had taken at least five times longer than it should have normally – she wasn’t sure about numbers, exactly, she’d never actually taken this trip herself – they’d pulled into Massachusetts yesterday. Jennifer said that she figured they’d make it to her hometown tomorrow. Emma wanted to see the town that her girlfriend had grown up in, before she chose to abandon that life and move across the damn country. “No, of course I don’t like the zombie apocalypse, I wish  _that_  hadn’t happened. But it was probably  _going_  to happen anyway. Inevitability of the human condition, or whatever. And if it was going to happen _anyway_ , then I am terribly pleased that I am facing it with  _you_.”

“That’s… well, shit. I’m not usually so good with this part,” Jennifer laughed, squeezing her fingers. “You’ve managed to render me speechless, sweetheart.”

“Yeah, well, I’m told I’m good at – is that car  _moving_?”

Jennifer’s head snapped around to face the front again, and she gaped at the road. “It  _is_!”

It had been so long since they’d seen anyone else driving around that for another moment, neither of them knew exactly how to react to it. After all, while they’d stumbled on a few small pockets of survivors in the last couple weeks on the road, no one had been  _mobile_. Those few people that hadn’t already been eaten were hunkered down in basements, hiding. For the most part, though, they had to avoid cities and large towns, because there swarmed hordes of the undead – or simply diseased live, perhaps – all waiting for new comers to come for lunch. They’d stopped on a hill outside Omaha, Nebraska, and looked down into the city. Not only had there been no signs of life aside from the shuffling zombies, but it was more destroyed than they had expected. The zombies had eaten anything that had been planted around the city, and garbage bins had been emptied, and even the walls seemed to have been stripped of everything that wasn’t metal or stone – wood and fabric and even  _drywall_  had been consumed in their desperate scramble to find _anything_  to eat.

“Jennifer!” Emma grabbed at the handle of the door. “We’re gonna smash into them!”

“Shit!”

The truck skidded slightly, as Jennifer over corrected for the instinct to drive towards whatever she was staring at, as though she’d been a drunk driver, and like it wasn’t the middle of the afternoon on a sunny day, the roads completely empty.

Fortunately, the car that had been approaching them stopped as well, and the driver tumbled out. She didn’t look upset to nearly be smashed into by them, actually – she looked thrilled to actually be seeing other people.

“Hey!” She called, waving her arms.

Jennifer shifted the truck into park – though she left the engine running in case they needed a quick exit. Throwing open her door, she stepped out, warily. “Hey. You all right?”

The woman laughed, stepping closer to them, quickly. “Yeah, yeah, I’m all right, we’re all right. I didn’t think there was anyone out here!”

The passenger door of the car opened, and a man unfolded himself from the passenger seat. Folding his arms on the top of the door, he watched them, more wary than his female companion – but he was still smiling. Apocalypses were lonely things – it was a comfort to find other people alive, and not eating everyone in sight.

“Hey. I’m Kerry, and this is Daniel… you don’t know how great it is to see  _people_ ,” she laughed, offering her hand to shake. Jennifer shook firmly, smiling faintly back at her. “Where are you folks headed? There’s not a hell of a lot back east, so I hope you’re not looking for anyone.”

Jennifer hesitated, glancing back at Emma, who had half climbed out of the truck, holding onto the door in case she needed to pull herself quickly back inside. Emma watched, quietly. “We are, actually,” she said, at last.

“Tough break,” Kerry said, shaking her head.

"Why do you say that?" Jennifer asked, warily. 

  
Kerry hesitated, glancing back at Daniel, then said, "We'll, it's just that there's nothing  _there_  anymore. They burned Gloucester to the ground, to try and contain the infection."

  
She hissed. "I was born in Gloucester."

  
"Well, hate to break it to you, but your hometown is gone," the other woman shook her head. "Most of the areas been demolished, trying to keep them in. It's a disaster. Almost impossible to find out if particular people are alive but just hiding, or dead. Or not quite dead, if you get what I'm saying."

  
"I'm looking for one woman in particular," Jennifer tried, hopefully. After all, it was a long shot like you'd see in movies, but she had to try. "A... a friend of mine, she was a lawyer in Danvers. Michelle Rodriguez?"

  
Kerry's brow furrowed, then she shook her head. "No, sorry, never heard of her."

  
Hope floating away, she nodded. "No, I knew it was a long shot, but... I sort of figured if she was alive, she would have got as many survivors together as she could, set up base..."

  
"Some people tried that." Daniel spoke up. "Created a little base and all. But they didn't defend themselves very well."

  
Jennifer sucked in a sharp breath. "Eaten?"

  
"No," he shook his head. "Worse. Killed by other humans that wanted the supplies and ammo they'd stockpiled. They were all killed, except for a few people that they kidnapped, and I  _don't_  think they did that for altruistic reasons, you get what I mean? It's martial law out there, and some people have really taken that seriously. It's  _war_  now, and the only enemy isn't the zombies. It's everyone around us, now."

“Shit,” she breathed, running her hand through her hair. “There’s nothing left?”

“Not of Gloucester,” he shook his head. “You said you were looking for someone in Danvers? There’s a bit left there, structure’s sound, anyway, but there’s not a whole lot else. Maybe your Michelle is out there, maybe she’s not. Impossible to say. If you were smart, you wouldn’t head out there.”

“Yeah, well…” she shrugged, smiling faintly. “If I didn’t do some stupid things, my life wouldn’t be exciting, would it be?”

Kerry snorted. “I could stand a lot  _less_  excitement in my life, thank you very much. What with the zombies, and the fires, and the state of emergency, but… well. At least you all seem to have the right idea, getting a trailer like that. It’s like a little bit of home away from home, isn’t it?”

Jennifer hesitated, and glanced over her shoulder at the little trailer. It  _was_  their home, now. Had been for almost a month, and would probably continue to be so for much longer. “Yeah, it is. Actually, ah…” She hesitated, then offered something. It may not be much, but under the circumstances, she sort of thought that it might be nice to show a little bit of humanity to their fellow survivors, their fellow wanderers. Their fellow nomads. “There was a trailer, about twenty clicks back, I spotted it on the side of the road. I don’t know what its condition is, or anything, but… maybe it might work for you two?”

It was Daniel that smiled, a genuine look of relief. “That – that might be good. Thank you.”

“Hey, no problem. Good luck out there.”

Kerry laughed, shaking her head. “Yeah, yeah, we’ll probably need it.”

“So will we,” she said, and headed back towards the truck again, resting her hand for a moment on the top of the driver’s side door, watching them. “I hope you find something worth looking for, out there.”

“You too,” Kerry smiled, slipping back into the car. “Good luck finding your friend.”

Jennifer nodded, and slipped inside, tugging the door shut. She was still for a moment, just looking out the windshield, watching as Kerry started her car back up, and skirted around first the trailer, then watched in the rearview mirror as she went around the ambulance, and finally disappeared back up the road. Finally, she took a deep breath, and shifted the tow truck back into drive, and headed down the road again.

“So. Is it worth going to Danvers, then?” Emma asked, softly.

“If there’s any chance she’s still there… it’s worth trying.” Jennifer said, quietly. “I owe her that much, at least.”

Emma nodded, pressing her lips together in a thin line, and turning to look out the window.

“It’s not – I’m not going to leave you for her, or anything,” she said, quickly, glancing over at Emma. “I… it’s nothing like that. You don’t need to be jealous. I’m not going to leave you. It isn’t because of that. It’s because we were…. We were together for almost ten years, Emma, she was a huge part of my life, I loved her once upon a time, I can’t just leave her to get eaten by zombies…”

“No, I get it,” she murmured, quietly.

“…right.” Jennifer sighed, knowing that she  _hadn’t_  managed to explain it, not properly. But Emma also wasn’t arguing. That was her Emma.

 

+++

 

Emma wasn’t sure, exactly, what she had been expecting.

Danvers was a beautiful little town – or had been, once upon a time, anyway, set just off of the ocean, with trees surrounding the area and beautiful little houses that had probably been constructed hundreds of years before, and many quaint little details that would not have looked out of place in a tourist brochure for the state. It was a beautiful place, it really was, and she found it very attractive. Or rather, she found what little was  _left_  of it very attractive. Like every other place they had encountered so far, there was very little left of it.

There were zombies, too.

They had decimated the town. They paused on a hill, just outside of town, looking down at the devastation, and Matthew had very convincingly made the point that there was no way that it was going to be safe to go into the town here, not if they wanted to  _live_.

“I don’t care if your fucking  _mother_  is down there, we  _cannot_  just walk into that!” He had protested, shoving his glasses up his nose and trembling slightly.

“I think you’re right,” their guide had admitted, and they had made other plans, then.

Jennifer had been forced to skirt the town proper itself, moving towards the edges of town through a back road that Emma admitted she probably never would have noticed, if she had not had it pointed out to her, and had to think that probably it was a very good thing that her introduction to the town was taking place with someone that had grown up here and knew it presumably like no one else could ever hope to. Driving along the edges of the town, Jennifer had taken then towards a small rural area that had houses only every dozen acres or so, spreading them out further, giving them more space. Not quite farmland, but certainly country.

Driving through this area, Jennifer nodded ahead, and murmured, “That’s where we’re going.”

“Where?” Emma perked up slightly, frowning.

“See the house there?” She murmured, nodding towards it. It was a white, colonial style clapboard house, quiet and simple, with dark green shutters and gingerbread trim, looking sweet and quiet and like someone’s  _home_ , though the front door hung open, like someone had forgotten to close it when leaving, inviting all manner of anyone going past to come in.

“Yeah. I see it.”

“I lived there. For about five years, before… after high school I lived with my parents for a couple years, then Michelle and I moved in there. Michelle was still in school, back then, law school. But she wanted a house, so… she bought one. She owned it, you see, not me, even though I’d lived there as long as she’d owned it, so when we broke up… when she went on to greener pastures or whatever it was she was doing… my name wasn’t on anything, so I was out on my ass. I couldn’t stand moving in back with my parents again, so I hit the road, and… well. You know the rest of  _that_  story.”

“Huh.” Emma breathed, shaking her head slightly. “Yeah, I do. So that’s where we should find Michelle Rodriguez, then, huh? I mean, if she’s around to be found?”

Jennifer cleared her throat, and nodded. “If she’s there to be found.”

“Well. Then I guess we’d better get in there and… see if we can rescue your ex.” Emma said, shaking her head slightly, shifting to pick up her gun again, laying the sawed off, her very favourite, across her lap. “Hey, a lawyer could even be handy. I mean, not for  _law_ stuff, because what the hell is law stuff gonna do, when the world is over, but maybe for other things. Like knowing about people and stuff. How they think. Lawyers basically have to be psychologists, right? So that would be helpful.”

“You really don’t want to do this, do you?” Jennifer said, quietly.

“Did I say that?” She waited until the other stopped the truck, then stepped out of it, balancing herself carefully for a moment, then started limping towards the house, not taking her time like she should have, just rushing into the situation. “Let’s go.”

“Emma!” Jennifer growled, and darted after her, glancing back as the ambulance parked, and the guys tumbled out of it, guns and axes in hand. “Dammit, wait up…”

“What’s the hurry?” Matthew called, jogging up towards them, brows furrowed. “Did something happen?”

“Emma’s… throwing herself into this a little too…” She cleared her throat, frustrated as she waved at the porch of the little house. Emma was marching right up the stairs, gun held tightly in her hand, limping on her cast. “She’s just… acting weird.”

“Because she’s trying to rescue her girlfriend’s ex, maybe?”

She glanced at him, sharply. Matthew’s brows were furrowed, but he shrugged when she looked at him.

“What, I’m not the expert or anything,” Matthew hooked his thumb in his pocket, shifting to let his rifle on his other shoulder, frowning slightly. “But I have a boyfriend now, right? And if he suddenly said he had to go rescue some ex boyfriend or ex girlfriend or something, I mean, I’d still go rescue them because I’m not an asshole, I’d help them, but… I don’t think I’d be  _happy_  about it. I think I’d still be stupidly jealous, in the end. Even if I did it, even if I saved them. I’d still be pissed.”

Jennifer sighed. “I told her that it’s not because she’s my ex, it’s because she was such a huge part of my life…”

“Oh yeah, that makes it  _so_  much better,” he shot back, sarcastically, rolling his eyes, then nodded at the door. “Your girlfriend has gone inside, so… I mean, we should probably  _go_ , right? Make sure she’s all right?”

“Yeah, shit.” She swallowed, guilt and anxiety warring in her chest for which was apparently more important right now, and she wasn’t really sure which of the two was liable to win. Taking a deep breath, she tightened her grip on her bow, checked to make sure that her quiver was full of arrows – then jogged forward towards the house that she had lived in for five years of her life, slipping inside. “ _Emma_!”

“Right up here,” she called back, flippantly, then said, “This house has been destroyed, Jennifer.”

Stepping into the kitchen that she had made a thousand different meals in, it seemed, Jennifer glanced at Emma, who was standing by the refrigerator. The door had actually been ripped right off of it, and there was the scent of spoiled food, a few bottles broken and scattered across the floor, mustard of all things smeared across the tiles, yellow footprints scattered from someone that had walked through it and tracked it through the house. Michelle couldn’t be here, she thought, finally. She would never leave that the way it was. Never. Emma’s eyes weren’t on the spoiled food, though, or the fact that there were shattered plates on the floor, too, or that it looked like someone had tried to eat the papers that were laying on the kitchen table. Her eyes were on the freezer door, and the photos that were plastered on it with bright coloured plastic letter magnets.

Jennifer drew in a deep breath, biting her lip as she stepped closer, warily.

This had been a bad idea.

“You two looked very happy together,” Emma said, quietly, fingers brushing over one of the pictures. Of course there were pictures of her and Michelle together, why couldn’t it have been easy, why couldn’t Michelle have moved on as neatly as Jennifer had, as neatly as Jennifer had been  _sure_  that she had. After all, Michelle had dumped  _her_ , not the other way around.

But there were pictures of the two of them on the freezer door, laughing together, smiling at their five year anniversary that they’d spent in Paris, hamming it up for the camera at Michelle’s brother’s wedding.

“You must have really loved her, huh?” Emma murmured, looking up from the pictures.

Jennifer swallowed, and murmured, quietly, “I did, once.”

“You don’t just stop loving someone, not that quick,” she shook her head, eyes back on the pictures. “I was in love with Aldis once, remember? Either the love  _changes_  and it just isn’t the same anymore, or you grow to hate them. And you don’t hate her, cause if you did, you wouldn’t have insisted that we come back to Danvers to come get her. So you don’t hate her. So did the love change, or… do you still love her?”

“The love changed.” Jennifer murmured. “Come on, Emma, we need to go find out what happened, we can’t stay here.”

“Has anyone checked upstairs?” Aldis said, leaning in the kitchen door, frowning slightly as he held tightly to his rifle, looking back and forth between them. “Or just downstairs?”

“No, ah… no one has checked upstairs.” Jennifer cleared her throat, turning to look back at him.

“I’ll check upstairs,” Tom offered, from behind Aldis, and she barely saw him lift a hand to acknowledge them before he headed up the stairs.

“Guess I’ll check out back, then?” Aldis suggested, shrugging. “Matthew, c’mon, you can give me a hand checking outside, huh?”

“Yeah, sounds – “

There was a bloodcurdling scream from upstairs.

“ _Tom_ ,” Emma gasped, and shoved past Jennifer, bolting for upstairs, as fast as her casted leg would take her, which was apparently not all that quickly, but she seemed determined. Grabbing the railing, she hauled herself up, hands shaking as she dragged herself up the stairs, moving as fast as she could.

Jennifer was right behind her, reaching forward to press her palms against Emma’s back, helping to push her girlfriend up, faster, frantically – and Matthew and Aldis were mere steps behind her, Matthew so desperate to get upstairs that he kept stepping on her feet in his rush. It was like he would have flown, if he could have managed it, and it didn’t help that Tom was still howling like he was being gutted. As they rushed up the steps, there was the echoing bark of a shot, then another, then another, the sounds bouncing off of the narrow hallways of what had once been Jennifer’s home, a familiar realm that had become unfamiliar with that sound.

Emma burst up onto the second floor first, but she was quickly followed by the others, spilling out like the water tumbling over the edges of a overflowing causeway, bursting out from their confines.

It was a bloody mess, the hallway.

Tom was sprawled against the wall at the end of the hall, where Jennifer could remember walking past a million different times before, times that rolled into each other, became one ambiguous  _before_ , where she had been walking from the room that she shared with Michelle to the bathroom at the end of the hall. There had been a portrait of them hanging there, at the end of the hall, one that had been taken at that same brother’s wedding as the other picture, one of Jennifer in a blue dress with little white polka dots that she had bought two weeks before the wedding online, and Michelle had laughed at her stupidity, buying it last minute, thinking that maybe it wasn’t going to get there on time. Michelle had been wearing a yellow sundress that had stood out so well against her darker skin, making her look so  _alive_  and vibrant, and Jennifer could remember the picture as though it had been seared into her mind. Jennifer’s eyes on the clouds over their head, Michelle’s eyes on her. It had been sweet, she had thought, they had hung it up there, and she could still remember the other’s voice, promising that  _it would always be like that_.

But it was not always like that. They weren’t together like they had been in that picture anymore. The photo wasn’t even hanging there, anymore, the wall behind Tom’s shoulder was blank, empty. Tom was leaned against the now blood splashed wall, his gun held unsteadily in his right arm, his axe still hanging on his belt. Usually he had them both out, he had always said that it made him feel like a Celtic warrior, or something, wielding a firearm in one hand and a slashing weapon in the other, but he stood there with just the gun, now, blood soaked into his shirt.

There was a woman in front of him, a woman with dark curly hair that curled around her shoulders, and blood soaked into her shirt.

A familiar woman, when it came down to it.

“ _Michelle_?!” Jennifer howled.

The woman reeled around to face her, but it wasn’t the woman she knew.

Not anymore.

It was still  _Michelle_ , she still recognized her. But she wasn’t the same. She was… wrong. Twisted. There was a ravenous hunger in her eyes that she had never seen there before, there was a desperation in the way that she moved, frantic and starving, willing to do whatever was necessary to eat, again. There was blood dried on the other woman’s face, down her neck, on her hands.

It wasn’t Michelle. Not the Michelle she had loved for ten years, not the smart lawyer that had always managed to cut people down to pieces with just her words. This was not the woman that Jennifer had woke up beside in bed for years, that she had let her hand run up the spine of, quietly, this was not the Jennifer that had she had shared Christmases and Thanksgivings and Valentines Days and St. Patrick’s Days with, this was not the woman that she had loved so much that it had hurt, this was not the woman that she had left behind three months ago.                                

This was the thing that was living in that woman’s body.

“Get back!” Tom roared, pale beneath the blood that was splattered across his face. It was strange, the way he was cradling his left arm to his stomach, but it didn’t look right. There was something wrong with it, and she realized with a horrified jolt that there was part of it _missing_. His hand was a mangled mess, and suddenly the fresh blood on Michelle’s chin became even more horrifying.

“Kill it!” Matthew howled.

“No!” Jennifer hadn’t even expected to say that, herself. “ _No_ , we can give her the drugs, we can save her, we can – !”

Only Michelle was moving. She wasn’t going to wait for debates or the chance that they could find some way to force medication into her mouth without somehow getting bitten themselves. It was too late for that. She let out a howl that did not sound in any way human, her mouth opening further than any human mouth should move, then she threw herself forward, those ravenous hands reaching for them.

Emma, beside her, started shooting at the woman. Jennifer might have thought that it was motivated by jealousy, only her ex was trying to  _eat_  them and no matter who it was, of course Emma was going to shoot them. She had to destroy them.

Only bullets didn’t seem to be making any difference, she kept coming, and even Emma’s usually unerring aim seemed to be achieving no results.

It was Matthew, actually, that let out an absolutely blood curdling scream, and embedded an axe in Michelle’s once dearly beloved face.

Her howls of rage, of hunger, of desperation, abruptly stopped. She stumbled, instead, almost falling back, her face distorted by the axe buried in it, then bolted forward again, consumed with the need to  _eat_  and forgetting about even her own pain in that desperation to devour – only Matthew was just as desperate as her, only in a different way, and he wrenched the axe back out of her face, and hit her again, and again, until he was just beating on a dead corpse, finally, covered in a layer of gore that made him look like a serial killer or some kind. Aldis was finally able to pull him away from what had once been Michelle, tugging him back, and promised him that they would get away.

“Jennifer.  _Jennifer_.”

She jerked, startled, looking away from what remained of her old life, staring at Emma as though she didn’t understand what she was looking at.

“We have to  _go_ ,” Emma was saying, earnestly. “There might be more of them. And Tom… we have to make sure he doesn’t get infected. We have to  _go_ , Jennifer. Are you listening to me?!”

“Right,” she gasped, shaking herself. “We have to go.”

 

+++

 

Jennifer was sitting on top of the defibrillator, barefoot and dressed only in the over large t-shirt that Emma had once given her as pajamas, when all of this had started. She should be sleeping, in bed, or something, but she had padded over to the ambulance, instead, and there she sat, silently.

This was all her fault.

It was her fault that they had gone out to Massachusetts, it was her fault that they had gone to try and save Michelle, because no matter what she told Emma, no matter how she really _did_  have the best intentions and really  _did_  want to stay with Emma, there had been a part of her, at the edges of her soul, that had still been in love with Michelle. She hadn’t been lying, when she had said that the love had changed. There was no passion, no need to never lose her again, but the love was still there, it hadn’t been lost. It had been there enough for her to feel the need to try to save her, to try and make sure that the woman she had once spent her life with was still safe.

God, they’d been so reckless, running in there, and she should have  _talked_  to Emma properly, before hand, so that neither of them would have over reacted the way they had…

Had the world been normal, still, it probably would have been one of those little spats that couples have, then they would have sat down, talked it over, and it would have been done. But it wasn’t normal. It was the fucking  _apocalypse_ , and things that might seem tiny or insignificant normally could get overblown into catastrophes under these circumstances.

 Now this was all her fault.

Tom lay on the sheets on the gurney, eyes closed, dark circles under them, making his already pale skin even paler. He wasn’t much different from the colour of the sheets. Were the situation different, she couldn’t even begin to guess how many pints of blood Aldis would have needed to give him, to try and replenish, but without them available, he’d done what he could. Emma was the same blood type as Tom, it had turned out – and thank god, she thought, that the ambulance had the litmus tests needed to determine that – and Aldis had reluctantly allowed her to provide at least some blood for Tom. He’d said, afterwards, that she had probably kept him alive, doing that.

One of Tom’s arms was resting by his side, under the sheets, and the other, his left, was resting on top of the blankets. It was heavily bandaged, now.

And half of his arm was simply gone.

Before, when they had still been in the house, Jennifer had noticed that Michelle had apparently ripped part of Tom’s hand off, and Aldis had said later that he didn’t know how Tom was still standing. It must have been excruciating, to have all the tiny bones in his hand torn apart, his whole thumb torn off with her teeth. But the real fear, Aldis had said, was that from the bite he’d gotten infected, and that even if they managed to save Tom, he could simply die of infection.

He’d been dosed heavily, since they’d gotten him back to the ambulance, with Seroquel, heavy enough that Aldis had protested that overdose was very possible. That had been the first step, but the second was dealing with infection, and in the end, though he hated to do it, Aldis had been forced to finally remove what was left of Tom’s hand, and half of his forearm, cutting the losses in order to save his life. Now, their resident doctor said, he was out of the danger zone. He’d have to be careful,  _very_  careful, until it was completely healed, but it had been almost three weeks, now, and based on the patterns that had manifested before everything had gone completely to shit, if Tom hadn’t become a zombie yet, he wasn’t going to. It was good to know, he’d said, grimly, that at least if they got on the anti-psychotic medications early enough, they could nip zombie-ism in the bud.

Tom was going to be all right, he said.

That didn’t change the fact that it was  _her fault_  that this had happened to him, in the first place.

Jennifer took a deep breath, and stood, moving to leave the ambulance when in a quiet, raspy voice, Tom said, “Hey, leaving without actually saying hello?”

She froze, and cleared her throat, slowly lowering herself back down. “Hey. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you…”

“I sleep like shit these days, anyway,” he smiled at her, looking up through half lidded eyes. “Something about nightmares and dreams of disembodied hands… plus I keep getting phantom pains in my fingers… Aldis says I’ll probably have that for the rest of my life, you hear that?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of that.” She smiled faintly at him. “Look, Tom, I just want to – “

“God, stop apologizing,” he snorted, letting his head thump back on the pillow. “I think you’ve apologized more times than I can count already, how about you don’t make it one more time, huh? I mean, I get it. You blame yourself. But it could have happened anywhere, anytime. It’s not just cause we were going to rescue your ex. Could’ve happened rescuing one of Emma’s buddies, or a stranger. I mean, there’s a zombie war going on out there, they’re trying to eat everyone. Kinda hard to avoid, isn’t it?”

Jennifer took a deep breath. “Yeah, but your arm…”

“Eh, so I’m missing my hand.” He lifted the arm, considering the heavily bandaged stump for a moment, frowning at it. “War wound, huh?”

“ _Tom_ …”

“Hey. Way I see it, I’m missing my left hand. I’ve still got the  _rest_  of me. I almost died in there, Jennifer. At least I’m still alive.”

“Yeah, it’s true, it’s just… you know.” Jennifer smiled tightly, reaching out to brush her fingers over his forehead, as though checking for fever. “Do you, ah… need some painkillers?”

“Actually, I am feeling surprisingly all right,” he shrugged, slightly. “Running pretty high on a daze of drugs, actually… pretty trippy. Any more and I’m pretty sure I’ll start forgetting my name.”

She laughed, softly.

“I mean, it’s not awesome, to be missing my hand. But it could be worse, right? I’m more worried about Matthew, frankly.”

“What?” Her brows furrowed. “Why?”

“Well, I mean… he killed her, in the end, right?” He cleared his throat. “And Matthew hadn’t actually managed to kill a zombie yet, and not only was this a zombie, it was someone that one of his friends knew, and she had attacked me, and… I mean, I don’t want to get smug about this or anything, but I think it was because she attacked  _me_  that he went a little psycho, and okay, it’s nice to have a boyfriend that apparently is into you enough to kill for you, but he’s been weirdly quiet ever since, and… yeah. I’m just really worried about him.”

“I think he’s going to be okay,” Jennifer said, softly, watching Tom. “He just needs time to heal.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t exactly give him any healing of my own until this is a little more healed up,” he thumped his stump on the bed. “Cause I think ripping stitches and bleeding everywhere during sexual healing time would probably make things worse, not better.”

She snorted, and shook her head. “Oh god, Tom…”

“I know.” He smirked up at her, eyes starting to droop again. “I hate to say it, but I think I’m probably going to pass out, again. The amount of drugs Aldis has got me on is sort of ridiculous, I feel like I can’t stay awake.”

“Probably wants you to sleep it off,” she smirked slightly, then paused. Leaning closer to Tom, she said, quietly, “Hey… you know that the reason I refused the date wasn’t… wasn’t because I didn’t like you, or anything, right? It was because I was a lesbian. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, smiling softly at her. “I know. But thanks for trying to make me feel better.”

Jennifer leaned over to kiss his forehead, then stood again. “Sleep well, Tom, okay?”

“Yes ma’am,” he rasped, smiling as he closed his eyes.

Slipping out of the ambulance, she locked the door quietly behind her, then padded, barefoot, back towards the trailer, and the woman that she had left sleeping in the queen sized bed in the back of it. When she crawled back into the bed, though, Emma wasn’t actually sleeping, she was laying there with her eyes open, watching her.

“Hey,” Jennifer said, quietly, not sure what else to say.

“Hey yourself,” Emma murmured, and offered her hand.

She took it obediently, lacing their fingers together as she lay beside Emma, quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said, before Jennifer had the chance to say the same thing.

Confused, she blinked at her. “What are you sorry for? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Sure I did,” the blond smiled, faintly. “I was an idiot. I didn’t listen to you, when you said that you weren’t trying to get back together with Michelle, I didn’t pay attention to myself when I realized that you would never betray me like that. I mean, I may not be a perfect judge of character, and we may not have been together that long, but… things like this, like the end of the world, they really solidify things, don’t they? Speed it all up. And I sort of feel like what we got, here, this… it isn’t just going to disappear overnight, and it isn’t going to be broken by saving someone that you used to love. This is… real. And I should have remembered that, before I acted like a petulant teenager and nearly got us all killed.”

“But it was my fault that we were  _there_ ,” Jennifer reminded her. “It was my fault that we were in that house, where Michelle was a zombie, and she nearly killed Tom, nearly killed us all, because  _I_ brought us there.”

Emma scoffed, shaking her head. “You didn’t make Michelle into a zombie, Jennifer. You didn’t know she was there, you didn’t know she was infected. You brought us there to do a _good thing_. You tried. It’s not your fault.”

She sighed, shaking her head.

“I mean it.” She said, sharply, grabbing the front of Jennifer’s shirt, startling her. “Look at me.  _Look at me_. You didn’t do this. Tom is  _alive_ , and you and I are alive, and we are going to _live_  through this goddamn apocalypse. You and me, and Aldis, and Matthew, and Tom. We are going to start driving, we are going to drive out to Nevada, we are going to go to my father’s place, and we are going to make a stand against the  _fuckery_  that is a zombie apocalypse, okay? The six of us, we’re going to outlast the end of the world. And you and I… we’re going to be together through it, okay? Just you and me. And it’s going to be  _good_.”

Jennifer hesitated, then nodded, quietly.

“Trust me, right?” Emma smiled, softly. “You and I. Together. Through the end of the world and beyond.”

“Yeah,” she murmured, finally smiling back at her.

“Good.” The blond shifted forward to cup Jennifer’s jaw, kissing her softly. “Now you have to figure out how to tell the guys.”

Jennifer laughed softly. “I say we don’t give them an option.”

“Works for me.”

 

+++

 

Jennifer tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, lightly, biting her lower lip. “So… you sure about this?”

“Yeah, I’m sure about this.” Emma glanced at her girlfriend, then grinned, and shifted over so that she could curl against her side, resting her head on the other woman’s shoulder. The night had long descended on them, and it was cold, even in the little cab of the truck, with the heater going. “Look, I know this is a little unusual and all, odd way to meet the relatives, but… come on, it’s not that bad. We’re going to have a safe place to be, and we’re going to be able to  _settle_  for awhile…”

“Yeah… about that. You sure we  _should_?” Jennifer glanced down at the blond head resting on her shoulder. “I mean, you saw what happened back in Massachusetts, people that tried to settle down…”

“Oi, the situation is a  _touch_  different.” She snorted. “They sort of… tried to do it themselves. Had no idea what they were doing, rushed into it, didn’t secure their surroundings enough… if they had even  _bothered_  to do a little research and maybe think about building a bunker, or something…”

“…your dad has a  _bunker_?”

“Yeah, what red blooded anarchist doesn’t?” Emma laughed, brightly, and when Jennifer gave her another sharp look, she just laughed harder, and dipped her head. “No, I’m serious, he’s got a bunker, it’s built in the back yard, it’s… I loved it when I was a kid, it was the only spot in the whole property that had a VCR, so I used to curl up in the bunker and watch cartoons, and dad would bring me grilled cheese. I think he liked that I enjoyed spending time down there, so if there ever  _was_  some kind of disaster, I wasn’t going to freak out about being in small spaces.”

“I don’t like being underground,” Jennifer admitted, clearing her throat.

She shrugged. “Well, we probably don’t have to spend a lot of time in the bunker, really… I mean, zombies aren’t wielding bombs, or anything. We can probably just stay in the house.”

“…is the house going to be all military too?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Well, I mean, I assume dad still has the pictures and stuff up, and it was painted, last time I was there, but yeah, it’s a little military. My dad used to be in the military, you know, years and years ago, he was a Marine. When he left the service, he married my mom, they moved out to the desert in his house, and then… well, I mean, he’d gotten frustrated with the state of the world long before I was born, but by the time I came around, dad had gone sort of paramilitary and wanting to be prepared for anything. He got a little paranoid, you know, thought that maybe people were going to attack America… and I guess he was right. I mean, people thought I was just joking with those zombie apocalypse plans, but…” Emma sighed, curling her arms tighter around Jennifer’s waist. “I really meant them. Dad taught me to prepare for any possibility… and I didn’t just have _zombie_  plans. I had survival plans for terrorists, floods, fire…”

“Huh.” Jennifer hummed softly, reaching up to brush her fingers through Emma’s hair for a moment. “You’re kind of all boy scout with this, huh?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” she laughed, amused. “Only I was never in the scouts. I considered the cadets, but didn’t end up joining anything, cause then mom got sick, and….”

“Yeah,” she kissed the top of her head, then slowed, then stopped the truck as they crested a low hill that was set in the hilly desert they were passing through, and were faced with a massive gate. There was a metal chain link fence running along the hill in either direction, cutting them off from just skirting the gate, lined with spiral barbed razor wire along the top of the fence. “…did we get turned around? I think we found the state prison, or something…”

“Nope.” Emma shifted to sit up, and shook her head. “Home.”

“You lived behind a  _razor wire fence_?” Jennifer gaped at her.

“Yep.” She grinned, and leaned over to grab the lights controls, clicking it back and forth to put the blinkers on high, then low, in a strange sort of pattern.

“…what are you doing?” Jennifer asked, brows furrowed in confusion.

“Morse code,” she grinned at her, and firmly kissed her girlfriend before slipping out of the truck, relieved to be back on two feet, not on a foot and a cast, not feeling unbalanced anymore. “Okay, get ready to drive the truck forward, it’s just going to be a minute.”

“…it’s locked, though, isn’t?” She asked, warily.

“Course it is,” Emma laughed, and closed the passenger door before heading forward to rest her hand on the massive lock that was set into the middle of the two swinging inward gates, holding them still and in place. She waited for a long few moments, then laughed when the lock unhooked itself under her hands, and she shoved the gates, hard. They swung open, slowly, creaking loudly as they did, until they bounced off of the massive stone pillars they were set into on either side. Stepping off to the side, she waved back at Jennifer, motioning for her to come forward.

Jennifer drove the truck and trailer slowly through the gate, as though half expecting the gates to swing shut at any moment, and kept going far enough for the ambulance to come through behind her, as well, before she stopped.

Aldis waved, as he drove the ambulance through the gate, next, and Emma cheekily waved back at him, grinning. It was strange. She hadn’t seen her father since her mother’s funeral almost ten years before, hadn’t actually managed to speak to him in years afterwards, and hadn’t set foot in this house in almost fifteen years. Yet she found herself grinning like a loon, almost giddy with the chance to see her father, to go back to the home and the life that she had enjoyed before her parents separated. If nothing else, she thought, this place would absolutely,  _absolutely_  be safe, and she knew that the zombies weren’t going to be marching into her father’s homestead. It was going to be safe here, for her friends, her family, her lover. They were going to have a chance at a damn  _future_  here again, and okay, maybe a handful of paramilitary people hunkering down in a compound wasn’t the  _best_ option for a real future, but at least it was a fair sight better than getting eaten somewhere on the side of the road and no one knowing where they were.

Limping slightly still, Emma hurried forward to grab the gates, shoving them both shut, and locking them again, firmly. She used to do this, when she was a kid, and when she was little, she used to put her feet on the bottom rung of the gate, and swing with them. Maybe she’d do that again, sometime, after her leg stopped giving her trouble, and it was fully healed.

Laughing,  _excited_ , she darted back to the truck, clambering up into the cab again. “Okay, keep going straight on this road, it curves a little, then gets over towards the cliffs, there, the house is set back half into the cliff.”

“We could still turn back now,” Jennifer glanced back at her, fingers tight on the steering wheel, knuckles white.

Emma smirked. “I can’t tell if you are trying to spare my feelings, or if you just really,  _really_ don’t want to have the awkward ‘hey, dad, I’m gay and this is my girlfriend’ conversation.”

Jennifer smirked right back at her, taking the curvy, bumpy road slowly, not wanting to dislodge the trailer. The truck bounced slightly over the rocks and potholes, but they were making steady progress. “It’s just, you know, you said that you haven’t  _seen_  him in almost a decade, hadn’t been out here in fifteen years…”

“No, you’re right,” She agreed, brushing her thumb over the stock of her sawed off, sitting between them on the seat. “I haven’t. but he’s still my dad, and I owe him a  _lot_ , in terms of our still being, you know, alive.”

“Which I am grateful for, don’t get me wrong.”

“Good,” Emma laughed, softly.

“But does being grateful automatically mean ‘let’s move in with my gun toting, freedom loving, ex-military dad’?” She glanced over at Emma, shrugging slightly.

“Hey, I’m your gun toting, freedom loving, zombie hating girlfriend. Sure you wanna stay shacked up with me?”

Jennifer laughed. “Okay, okay, I get the point. I’ll stop pushing.”

“Don’t stop being  _you_ ,” Emma leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I’d miss the crazy bitch I fell in love with.”

“Dork,” she informed the blonde seriously, and just grinned when she laughed.

Then they crested the hill, and both grew silent, though for very different reasons. Emma was quiet as she looked down on her old home, Jennifer was looking down on the military style compound that she very well may be using to hide out in for the rest of her life. The homestead that spread out below them couldn’t really be called anything  _but_  a compound, either, really. There was a myriad of buildings spread out, butting up to the cliff face itself, some of them actually half built into the rock, as though they had been there since the beginning of time and the rock had simply grown around them. One of those out buildings had a fenced area attached, where horses and cows and what looked from where they were like sheep grazed in a field, though it was hard to tell from that distance, and at night. Notably, though, there was  _light_  everywhere, the buildings all still lit up as though the hydro grids hadn’t gone offline months ago, and there were spot lights on poles lighting up the road and the fields that spread out beyond the buildings.

“How does he have  _power_?” Jennifer demanded. “Does he have an oil refinery and well on the land, or something?”

“He’s not on a generator,” Emma laughed, as they pulled into the large open space that the buildings surrounded. “My dad was paranoid and off the grid long before the apocalypse brought the grid down. He’s got his own power. Solar for when there’s sunlight, and there usually is around here, and then windmills and water wheels in the river for when there isn’t. I’m telling you, babe, he’s got a sweet set up for the end of the world, here.”

“Sounds like,” she murmured, parking the truck, and looking towards the main house, warily. “That him?”

The man that had stepped out of the door was tall and stocky, broad shouldered and very visibly muscular, even with the heavy military style jacket he wore. His head had obviously been shaved, but he had a uniform length covering of stubble over his scalp and square jaw. There was a rifle cradled in his arms, and a scowl on his face.

“Yeah,” Emma nodded, suddenly anxious despite her previous exuberance.

“You all right?” Jennifer asked, clearly willing to offer – yet again – a hasty retreat, though she also equally clearly was willing to bite her tongue, this time.

“Yeah.” Shoving the passenger door open, Emma stepped out, her own sawed off hanging from her hand, looking casual despite the reality of her white knuckle grip. She stood just inside of the lee of the door, and lifted her right hand in greeting. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he nodded, not moving.

“…long time, no see,” Emma offered, awkwardly, eyes flicking to look over at Jennifer as she stepped out of the driver’s seat, bow in hand. Just in case.

“Yeah,” he acquiesced with another nod.

Arching a single brow, Jennifer thought, idly, that Emma had clearly not gotten her talkative streak from her father, and figured, mostly idly, that clearly she must have gotten that from her mother. Not that Jennifer had ever had the chance to ask, but she had to assume, based on  _this_  ‘conversation’.

Emma rocked slightly, shifting her weight from foot to foot like she wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself. Even from here, Jennifer could see the way that her girlfriend’s fingers clenched and unclenched on the gun, a sharp contrast to the casual, almost lazy way that her father held his own gun.

“Well?” The man said, suddenly. “Just cause you ain’t talked to me in years and there are goddamn zombies eating everything in sight don’t mean you’ve forgotten what to do now, does  it?”

Letting out a breathless burst of laughter, Emma suddenly burst into a run, darting into his arms as he opened them for her, tossing her arms around his neck as she hugged her father, burying her face in his neck as he swung her around as though she was still his little girl and not a twenty eight year old woman.

“I was worried, about you,” she said, into the collar of his jacket.

“ _You_?” He scoffed, finally setting her back down on her feet. “ _I_ was safe here, and you should have known that.  _You_  were out in the damn  _city_  and  _who_  knew how you were doing there? Took you damn long enough to get out here, too… Portland was still safe?”

“Nope,” she shook her head, reluctantly stepping back. “We’ve been travelling cross country, tried to save someone we knew out Massachusetts way.”

His brows rose, and he scoffed. “Rescuing someone? What did I teach you about trying to _rescue_  someone?”

“Don’t do it? Unless you’re very, very sure that you can do it?” She said, sweetly.

“Funny,” he intoned, grumpily, and looked up as Jennifer approached, bow in hand, quiver slung on her back. “So. Who is this?”

Emma cleared her throat. “Hey, right. So…  _dad_ , this is my… girlfriend. Jennifer Lawrence. Jennifer, this is my dad. Jason Statham.”

Jennifer offered her hand. “A pleasure to meet you, sir.”

He didn’t hesitate. Without even the slightest pause, Jason took her hand, and shook firmly. “Hey there, Jennifer. You been taking good care of my baby girl?”

“Yes, sir.” She said, unswervingly.

“Good,” he nodded, dropping his hand to instead loop his arm around Emma’s shoulders. “Welcome to the Stone Ranch. Named after her ma, of course, it sounded better than the Statham Ranch.”

Emma blinked up at her father. “…you don’t mind that I’m with a girl?”

Jason arched a brow. “You  _wanted_  me to mind?”

“No,” she said, quickly, clearing her throat. “No, I’d rather you didn’t mind… I’d really rather you didn’t  _mind_.”

“Then stop complaining.” He ruffled her blond hair – then hesitated. His voice flat, Jason demanded, sternly, “What the  _hell_  is  _he_  doing here?”

Awkward and shame faced, Aldis stepped forward. He was followed by Tom and Matthew, but they were refreshingly free of scrutiny by the sheer virtue of  _Aldis_  being the centre of focus. Swallowing hard enough that they could all see his adam’s apple bobbing, even in the awful lighting of the overhead spotlights, he stepped forward. “Hello, sir,” he said, awkwardly.

Jason just sneered.

“It’s okay, dad,” Emma said, firmly, patting her father’s chest. “We’re… okay, now. You don’t need to try and protect my honour or anything.”

He scowled. “Asshole broke your heart.”

“ _Yes_ ,” she said, awkwardly. “But we’re past that, now. I got Jennifer now, remember? He’s a good guy, just not the good guy for  _me_. Besides, he’s practically a doctor, and I think we could definitely use a real doctor round the compound, if the world’s about ready to go kaput.”

Jason let out a puff of breath. “What, now my first aid ain’t good enough, either?”

Emma grinned. “Thanks, daddy.”

Blinking at the pair of them, Jennifer said, warily, “He didn’t say he was all right with Aldis being here.”

“Didn’t say he wasn’t, either,” she said, cheekily, and waved the guys closer. “So this is Matthew Grey Gubler, and Tom Hardly. They’ve helped us get out of some pretty major scrapes, and Tom’s a mechanic, he’ll be a great help in keeping machinery running, and stuff. Matthew… well, he’s… ah… well, he’s fucking Tom, so I guess he’ll be helpful in making Tom less… grumpy? So he’s sort of useful that way, I guess.”

“Hey!” Matthew squalled. “I am more useful than  _that_!”

She rolled her eyes, and confided in a stage whisper, to her father, “He’s a failed graphics designer and my old boss. Survives on coffee and cigarettes, and if you need, like, a new No Trespassing sign, or something, he’s your man. Otherwise… his best value is still gonna lie in his fucking Tom.”

“You  _suck_ ,” Matthew informed her, grumpily.

“No, darling, that’s  _your_  job.”

Jason snorted as Matthew started spluttering at a laughing Tom, and glanced down at his daughter. “They seem like they could probably use their own space… and I don’t wanna _hear_  them, frankly. Think we oughta stick those boys in the Hill House?”

“Sure,” she shrugged. “Sure you don’t want us out of your hair though, too?”

“Naw,” he shook his head. “You and your girl can have the yellow room. I mean, unless y’all _want_  your old room back…?”

“Oh god, no. No thanks.”

“Oh come on,  _that_  sounds awesome,” Jennifer grinned.

“No,” Emma pointed at her.

“C’mon in, then,” Jason shook his head, arm still curled tightly around Emma’s shoulders, clearly unwilling to let her go. It had been a long time since he’d had his daughter at this ranch, and clearly he intended to ensure that she  _stayed_.

“You sure you don’t mind us staying here?” Tom spoke up, as they headed back into the main house, Jason hanging his rifle on the rack over the door.

“Y’all helped my baby girl get here alive,” he said, glancing back at him. “And she clearly picked y’all to work with for a reason. So no, I ain’t got a problem with y’all staying here.”

He hesitated, then nodded, lightly pressing his last remaining palm against Matthew’s lower back, leading him forward. “Thanks. Sir.”

Jason smirked. “So y’all are gonna call me sir, huh?”

Tom cleared his throat. “No offense, or nothing, sir, but you’re a little… ah… military.”

He grinned. “Thank you.”

“That wasn’t meant as a compliment, dad,” Emma laughed, settling at the kitchen table, which was far too large for one man, as though he’d been expecting a lot of other people to end up here eventually to help him ride out the end of the world – though most of it was covered in various detritus, from engine parts to a bullet press to the various pieces of a now dismantled machine gun. Emma, for her part, actually began to assemble said machine gun as though it was second nature, slotting the pieces together as though she did this every day. “But I’m pretty sure your house has suffered from not having anyone else around, dad, seriously, machine gun on the table?”

“Seriously, Emma, there’s a zombie apocalypse going on out there,” he shot back, sarcastically, mocking her. “I didn’t have much of an occasion to deal with it. I just put it all wherever.”

“Well,  _that_  is going to change,” she snickered.

Jason narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you  _sure_  you wanna stay here?”

From across the room, Jennifer snorted.

 

+++

 

**EPILOGUE**

“Boo fucking  _yeah_!”

Jennifer looked up from the engine she was working on, blinking slightly as she pushed her long hair out of her face with an oily hand. “What?”

“I got an  _answer_ ,” Emma grinned, bouncing in her seat.

She frowned, confused for a moment – then she let out a long, slow breath of realization and stood, walking over to the table that Emma was still working on. Resting her hand lightly on the back of Emma’s chair as she peered over her shoulder, she looked down at the metal device on the table – and the long thin paper that had been printed from it. There were faint dots and lines scrawled lightly on it, as though the printer had been running out of ink. They were symbols that  _said_  something. “How long have you been waiting for someone to actually  _answer_  you?”

“Mm.” Emma considered that, leaning back on the other’s hand. “About… hoo… six years, now?”

“Six years.” Jennifer shook her head. “So what did they  _say_? Worth a six year wait?”

“They said… ‘We are in Austin stop. There are sixty three of us stop. There are children stop. Need medical assistance stop.’ There are also about…  _six_  spelling errors.”

Jennifer laughed, softly, stroking her blond hair. “Is it safe, out Austin way?”

“First thing I asked them,” she nodded at the little morse code machine. “I’m just waiting for their answer now, and – ah… here we go!”

The little machine started clicking and beeping, and Jennifer wondered for a moment why she hadn’t heard it, before, when the first message arrived, but no, that made sense. She’d been working on the engine, head buried in the gears, lost in her own little world of fly wheels and trying to keep the Stone Ranch’s power going, she wouldn’t have noticed the little clicks. Still, it was sort of amazing to watch the little paper feed itself out of the machine, and think of how insignificant it was, all things considered. Ten years ago, she would have laughed at it, thought it pathetic compared to the amazing things she could have done with her  _phone_  if she wanted to. Now, she watched a machine that had been created sometime in a past century spew out archaic symbols and marveled at the wonder that was  _communication_.

A lot of things had changed since the world had ended, ten years ago.

“Well?” Jennifer asked, leaning over Emma’s shoulder, planting a kiss on the top of the other’s sunny coloured hair, considering the little paper. “What do they say?”

“They say… ‘No infected seen for two years stop’. Huh. Well, that matches up with what they’re saying out Phoenix way… no zombies for two years… looks like maybe they’ve finally managed to wipe them out.” She pushed her chair back, laughing when Jennifer tugged it back out of her way for her, and headed for the large map of the country that had been pinned on the wall, grabbing a red wax pencil to jot notes on it, marking the last time that any of the undead had been seen in yet another area. “Maybe we’ve really managed to weather it, after all.”

“Don’t say that,” Jennifer smirked, leaning on the tabletop, watching her work. “Knowing our luck, they’ll come up out of nowhere, now.”

“They’re not going to come out of nowhere, dork,” Emma said, though she was smiling as she leaned on the wall, looking back at her with mischief twinkling in her eyes. The map was covered, now, with scrawling notes, from their travels across the country, gathering information everywhere that they went, asking everyone that they encountered – not that there  _were_  a lot of people to encounter, not anymore, though the numbers were beginning to grow again – when the last time that they saw one of the infected was. It had been five years ago, or so, that people had suddenly started reporting an absence of zombies. They weren’t encountering  _people_  anymore, and eventually the infection had stopped spreading. They had no proof that the same trend was occurring in other countries, but so far, throughout what had once been North America, and was now just scattered small colonies of once cities, the zombies seemed to have disappeared, at last. “They’ll come out of a basement they’ve been hiding out in, or something.”

“Oh yeah,” she laughed. “Because  _that’s_ likely to happen. So, we heading out to Austin, then?”

“We’ll leave tomorrow, so long as Aldis is up to it.” Emma nodded, hands on her hips. “I’d like to get some more information about their experience, it’ll make a good chapter.”

“That book is already longer than we have paper for,” Jennifer stepped closer to her, slipping her arms around Emma’s waist, pulling her against her waist, resting her fingers on her belly. “So really what you’re looking for in Austin is  _paper_ , not stories.”

“Maybe I’m looking for both,” she said, loftily, but she was smiling against the other’s shoulder as she curled into her. “ _Someone_  has to write down what happened, Jennifer, because we aren’t going to be here forever. Someday, the world is going to keep on marching on, and our children and our children’s children are going to want to know what the hell happened that there are massive skeletons of cities where no one lives and no one can  _remember_  living in them. So we have to remember for them, and, well… if we’re not around, maybe then we’ll all be grateful that I wrote everything down.”

“Yeah, but I’ve read this book of yours,” Jennifer nipped at her lover’s ear. “And I’m not sure, if you were detailing what happened in the end of the world, that you had to describe the first time we had  _sex_.”

“Course I did,” she laughed, twisting in her arms to grin up at her. “That was  _very_  important. Because if we’re going to be building a new and more tolerant society, I think they all should know that their gods had sex.”

“Gods?!” She laughed, louder, throwing her head back. “We are not their  _gods_!”

“We will be,” she promised, kissing Jennifer with teasing, light touches. “Their lesbian goddesses that managed to immaculate conception spawn an entire society of people.”

Jennifer snorted, pressing her forehead to Emma’s. “We didn’t  _immaculate conception_ anything, and two kids does  _not_  a society make.”

Emma smirked, and poked at her own belly, which was round and filling out with the promise, now, of a child. “Who knows, this might be a boy, and then yeah, we totally  _could_ have our own little society growing machine going, huh?”

“Oh god, no!” She swatted at her lover’s shoulder. “ _No_.”

“Hey, they’re only  _half_  siblings,” she teased, ducking when the other swung at her again. “Seriously! Willow is Aldis’, and this kid is Tom’s… technically they’re only half siblings, the chances of inbreeding are a lot lower and all, and – okay, okay, I’m shutting up!” She howled in laughter, ducking her head again.

“You are  _awful_  and you should never joke about that and why do I even keep you around?” Jennifer laughed, hard enough that she had to lean on the table, shaking her head. “We are _not_  Garden of Eden-ing up this new world, got it?”

“All right, all right, spoilsport,” she laughed.

“God, clearly we need to pick up some more people in Austin, bring ‘em back to the Ranch, because  _clearly_  we need some fresh blood in this place,” she groaned, straightening back up and reaching out to ruffle Emma’s hair. “So that maybe the next kid won’t be the product of this little high school mess.”

“Yeah, well… maybe  _you_  should have the next baby,” Emma smirked.

“Ugh, no thanks, you can keep doing that,” grabbing a rag, she tried to wipe the oil from her hands, and looked up towards the door when a short bundle of energy barreled into the room, throwing her arms around Jennifer’s middle and hugging her tightly. “Heya, munchkin, did you have fun with your granddad?”

“Uh huh,” Willow grinned up at her, all bright smiles and eager eyes, her tight curls bouncing around her head as she wiggled with joy. “We were checking the fences around the barn.”

“I remember,” she nodded, ruffling those curls. “They all intact?”

“Uh huh,” she chirped.

“Well, it’s almost time for the celebration, remember?” Emma called, grinning at her daughter –  _their_  daughter – when Willow looked back over at her. “So you better go run on upstairs, get a warm sweater, okay? You know Matthew and Tom worked hard on this. We wanna make sure we’re ready, right?”

“Yeah, right!” Willow nodded, and pulled free of Jennifer before fleeing upstairs, feet clattering on the stairs as she did.

“I swear,” Jason said, as he stepped into the room, tossing his rifle lightly down on the table, “That child is made of energy. You swear there’s no sugar left that she might be sneaking?”

“If there is sugar still out there, and someone is holding out on me, I am going to stab a bitch,” Emma said, firmly, and grinned at her father when he rounded the table and laid the flat of his hand on her stomach, as though checking to make sure that everything was still where it was supposed to be. “We heard from the morse machine today, dad.”

“Really?” His brows arched, surprised, and he glanced at Jennifer, as though for confirmation. “What’d they say?”

“There’s a community out in Austin… sixty three of them, and they need medical attention. I told them we’d head out tomorrow… hopefully Aldis is okay with that.”

“Eh, that’s his job, taking care of people, I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Jason shrugged, unconcerned with whether or not Aldis would actually be all right with going. “You sure you should be going out, though, in your current… condition?”

“Dad, I’m five months pregnant, it’s not like I’m going to pop anytime. And you know better than anyone that I can shoot zombies with the best of them. I’ll be fine. Now come on, don’t we have more important things to be worrying about? Like maybe the ten year party, tonight?”

He scoffed, and shook his head, stepping past her to check the engine that Jennifer had been working on, earlier, running his fingers over the header. He considered it for a moment, then glanced up at Jennifer, meeting her eyes and nodded, pleased with her work. “I don’t know why we’re having a party for this, anyway. Shouldn’t we be having a somber moment of silence, or something, for this? Instead, Tom got his hand in it, and now, ten years to the day some cops got their faces ate off in Kansas, he’s throwing a fucking  _party_?”

“I don’t know,” Jennifer shrugged, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned back on the table. “I’d rather have a party, than a funeral.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He shook his head, then shrugged.

Willow came barreling down the stairs, then, wearing a thick hand made sweater that Emma had knit for her out of the wool from their own sheep, though it was her first attempt at a dyed sweater, so even though she’d gotten pretty good at spinning wool over the years, and the knitting itself was pretty smooth, the colour was sort of uneven and splotchy. At least it wasn’t the same dull white that everyone  _else’s_  sweaters were, and for that, Willow was a very happy little girl. “I’m ready for the party, mom!”

“Good,” Jennifer pushed off the table, and nudged her arm. “Grab the blanket from the couch? Your mom is gonna get cold again.”

“I am not!” Emma squawked.

“Yes you are, mom,” Willow rolled her eyes, and grinned up at Jennifer. “Want me to grab some water too, ma?”

“Yeah, good idea,” she nodded, and watched the little girl bolt for the other room.

“ _Bundle_  of energy,” Jason said, again.

Before long, they were gathered with the rest of their little community, out on the field outside of the Hill House, in the lee of the cliff on one side, looking out over the grain fields on the other side, far enough from the animals that the loud noises shouldn’t bother them, the children running between the groups of people sitting on their blankets on the grass. They had started with just six people, on this ranch, almost ten years ago, and there was over fifty of them now. They’d built new houses, brought in more animals, planted more crops, and what had started out as a little family had become a small town. A _community_.

Willow flopped down between her mothers, wiggling, and said, “Is it starting? Is it starting?”

“Yeah, honey, I think it’s starting, watch the sky,” Emma grinned, leaning close to her daughter, eager. “Watch closely.”

Somewhere further out in the field, by the edge of the grain, Tom and Matthew were moving around near the set up they’d created, a flashlight bobbing as Matthew held the light up for his lover to work by. The movement didn’t make much sense to those in the audience, but still they watched it, curious – until there was an explosion of sound and light, and a shot of bright pink light shot up into the sky. It hung there for just a moment, then it erupted, sending a shower of bright coloured sparks cascading through the air.

“ _Oh_!” Willow gasped, eyes wide, mouth hanging open.

“Keep watching,” Jennifer ordered, hand resting on the back of Willow’s narrow shoulders. “It gets even better.”

There was a bright white explosion next, then a blue one that sent several smaller cascades of sparks exploding over and over in the sky, curling around themselves. Fireworks, for the first time in ten years, bright and clear in the night sky.

Tom had studied every book he could find on this, gathered up gunpowder and supplies and worked carefully, creating sparklers first, then fireworks, all building up to  _this_ , to this celebration. He’d worked hard at making it something that would be remembered, something that people would talk about for a long time to come.

And it was beautiful.

Emma had been excited for this plan, for the celebration, herself. But she had been more excited to see her daughter experience this, to see her child see something that had never _happened_  in her entire lifetime, to let her see something that Emma had certainly taken for granted in her own life, before. From the wide eyed, open mouthed awe on little Willow’s face, she wasn’t disappointed.

The world had changed. The world her daughter lived in was not the world  _she_  had grown up in. Disaster had destroyed it, and they’d been forced to reform it into something new.

Looking over at Jennifer, the other woman’s face lit by the exploding cascade of a silver eruption in the sky, Emma found that she couldn’t regret how it had happened. She was _happy_  that when the world had ended, she had found herself standing on the cusp of this new one with Jennifer’s hand laced in hers, the two of them stepping out into the wreckage of the old world to try and assemble the shambles into a new one.

The old world was dead.

The new one was perfect.


End file.
